You might be surprised. I had a similar one only the car ended up its side (driver's), and a lot of the things people tell me they'd do or react is the kind of thing i thought i would have before it actually happened. It seems like there's no time to do anything really before some serious forces are hitting you at which point you can't think rationally because you're in survival mode. First thing i did was check my phone was ok before i started to climb out, weird.

"Not again..."

I found out through two incidents in as many days (back-to-back) which happened while working on a contract job on a state highway outside of Newton, Kansas back in the summer of 2002 of an imprinted and innate capacity to "switch-on" in the most dire of circumstances while others on the crew either went into pre-shock or became completely functionless.

Two accidents. two days inna row during our road closures on a dangerous highway fulla truckers trying to beat tolls on the interstate and take the short cut:...both days, 18-wheelers in cruise control blew thorough the closures and caused major fatalities. I was one of 4 people on the crew to switch into rescue and control-mode, when the rest of the world nutted-up. Had state police thinking I was EMS already on the scene...(in my flagman uniform)....Did not know I had it in me, it simply happened. Exhausted me but I had no post-traumatic inabilities the next days, went back to work after the first accident when a couple of guys burned to death with no jaws of life there to save them...did all i could for the victims and my fellow crewmen after.

Next day, assumed flagman position (after having worked on on the main crew having handed my fagging position over to a greenhorn) and another accident, fully-loaded gravel truck was struck by a another 18-wheeler hauling two butane trucks...commanded the scene and kept a woman form going into shock by taking control...5 fatalities when the truck simply compacted two car-fulls of peeps into the back of a fully-loaded gravel truck in the front of the flag line.

I was one of the only people there with my wits about me-Guess I was there for a reason.

I have been in a lot of accidents i simply walked-away from-God works in mysterious ways with the damnedest of sorts.

You want a guy like me around for any potential shit-storm maybe??

Not really-You immediately found what it took to begin the process of stabilizing yourself with the first thing that made you feel like you had control after having found yourself in complete chaos. Good thing. That simple realization of your circumstances is part of a functioning 1st-circuit bio-survival circuit. Staved-off shock.

Or just maybe not everyone panics like they do on TV.

-scheherazade

You would probably be surprised at how most people are probably like this. They don't call it going into shock if it happened so quick that you are already there.