We tend to sort car accidents into general categories: rear-enders, T-bones, spinouts, and so on. This gives us a better mental picture of collisions we were not involved in and did not witness.
Words stand in for the events they describe, but they cannot fully recreate them. Every car crash is unique; the term “car accident” can refer to a nearly limitless variety of incidents, many of which caused serious injury or death.
For instance, a recent crash between a car and a garbage truck in the Bay Area that caused the death of a woman is described by KPIX-TV as a T-bone accident contains details unlikely to be repeated for a long time.
The woman was driving through an intersection early in the morning when she was hit by a garbage truck. The impact was so violent that it sheared off the trunk and one of the woman’s tires.
Somehow, though, her car was not disabled. She made a U-turn and continued to drive for about half a mile from the crash site, where police later found her. By that time, the car had caught on fire. The woman was declared dead where she was found, apparently of injuries she suffered in the crash with the garbage truck.
It is not yet clear who is at fault for this crash. When people injured in a car accident sue for compensation, it is the job of their attorney to investigate the incident and piece together what happened, so that it becomes clear whether or not the other party should pay for the client’s damages.
