A few of my friends and relatives have been in some accidents lately as either a party in the accident or a person severely affected by the accident. I’ve got a story of my mother-in-law, Anita, and her property.
Anita lives in Marion, TX, at a place where a farm-to-market road that is heavily trafficked (due to it’s proximity and ease of access to I-10) makes a T with another road. This is farmland on the outskirts of suburbia for San Antonio, but still, Marion’s a small town. The FM road runs NW-SE, and the other road runs into the FM road from the SW. Anita’s homestead (house, shop, barn, shed, and aboveground propane tank) sits on the southern underside of this T. This really needs a visual, so look on mapquest for a better idea of the site.
A new family has moved down the road from Anita, and the family includes a 20 year old woman. Apparently, Thursday night around 7:00 p.m., this woman was allegedly (a word I have to use to avoid libel issues) rather intoxicated, driving her car SE down the FM road at approximately 85-95 MPH. She tries to make the turn onto the other road and loses control. By now, you can guess where that puts her. At the T, the FM road and the land around it starts dropping, so from the closest building to the corner (the shop) to the next one (the shed), there’s a five foot dropoff in elevation.
The woman somehow manages to miss the aboveground propane tank, but she goes SE through the entire back wall of the shop, knocking over oxygen and acetylene tanks used for welding. The tanks start to leak. The car continued forward and landed in the shed, where the woman was knocked unconscious. She apparently wasn’t wearing her seat belt, but the airbags saved her. Meanwhile, Anita goes out to see what’s going on and calls 911. The chemical tanks get closed somehow, so there’s no further risk.
Another thing that saved her was running into the back wall of the shed. The metal studs apparently acted as speed restrictors, slowing her down enough to only land in the shed instead of going through it with most likely more dire circumstances.
As it turns out, here are a few more alleged details:
The drinking age in Texas is 21; the woman was 20.
The husband of this woman is wanting to sue the person who sold/gave her the drinks. It was a friend, not an establishment, so there’s some question as to whether the bartender responsibility law applies.
The woman had been driving without a license for 7 months.
Anita doesn’t have property insurance on the homestead.
I don’t know whether the woman has collision insurance or not, or even if the car is properly registered. However, Anita is getting a lawyer.
The accident was the first for the shop and the third for the shed. It’s position off of a curve makes it a somewhat inviting target for uncontrolled cars.
Reportedly the first thing the woman said after regaining consciousness was, “I want a drink and a cigarette.”
Sigh…