Say Anything Blog

This is a sad story...

RENTON, Wash. --� It was a slab of particleboard, about 5 feet long, 18 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches thick. No one knew how far it had traveled or how many times it had bounced off the pavement.

Late on Feb. 22, 2004, it was known only that it got loose on Interstate 405, near this Seattle suburb, and for a few moments became airborne. One witness later said it was simple physics that turned the board into a missile, hurtling north.

Maria Federici was driving south. Like other cars nearby, her Jeep Liberty was going about 60 miles per hour. She had just gotten off her shift. Federici, then 24, worked three bartending jobs, just as she had while studying at the University of Washington. She had recently graduated, and the road ahead was full of possibility. But on this cold and overcast Sunday night she just wanted to get home.

Federici was approaching her exit when the board pierced her windshield, glanced off the steering wheel and plowed into her face. The Jeep veered onto the shoulder and struck the Jersey barrier once, twice, before stopping.

...but I find this part a little troubling:

The randomness haunted Gamboa. A life was demolished before her eyes in a single moment, like a flash of lightning.

State lawmakers eventually would pass a bill in Federici's name, one that broke new ground in the prosecution of accidents caused by debris. But on that night fourteen months ago, the chief concern of almost everyone at the scene was keeping Federici alive.

I can just picture some poor schmuck getting jail time because a bungee cord holding down part of the load in the box of his pickup broke.

Lawyers like to say that there's "no such thing as an accident," but I don't think that's a healthy way of looking at things. Why should otherwise innocent people be punished for something that could probably be written off as bad luck?