2003-04-16 - 12:02 a.m. The Big Death Boston�s Big Dig started 9 years ago. Make the worst traffic in the USA better by forcing it underground. 200 Billion dollars later its opens. So tonight I drove through the biggest tunnel in the world, and over the widest bridge in the US. I have been looking forward to driving underneath Boston for years. Just the idea of a millions of people above me, thousands of tons of steel of buildings and concrete fortresses of finance�.. and me, hundred feet below, flying at 80 with my windows down and my music up. Boston used to make you stop, but with this big hole, it makes you fly. Or in some cases die. Today I saw, what I hope, is my last death. Upon entering the Big Dig, two motorcyclist, probably friends, ran into each other. --Imagine; you are driving next to your friend and you smack into his car, and he veers off and hits a tree. What do you do? As one person immediately crashes, the second rubbernecks as he tries to watch his friend that he just hit get run over. Looking behind him, his bike loses itself and spins out. He is thrown from it; 50 yards out, one hundred feet underground. The first man in down. He is shattered and lying on the ground. The second man is somehow able to move. The other friends, (the ones that didn�t crash) stop. Traffic, also stops. They get off their bikes and go towards both men. Strangely there is a cop already in the crowd of traffic, who get out to assist the men. The first man, who was hit, is lying very unnaturally. The cop seems to spend what feel like seconds at that mans side and moves onto the other man. As I drive by the wreak, I see fiberglass and fuel, and blood, all over the asphalt. I see the first man, with the cop standing over him, broken. His leg bent backwards and twisted back again over the other. His shoulder is parallel with his spine. Flat. No movement. The cop isn�t even looking at him. This man is dead. The other one is being help by his friends to come to the Cops car. One bike isn�t even recognizable. The others is between two lanes of this new super ten lane underground leaking fuel and teetering on its side. I look back quickly at the man on the ground. I know he�s dead, everyone does. He is as lifeless as the bike he was on. His body broken and shattered by metal and concrete. His helmet cracked from the drop at eighty miles per hour. A Toyota smashed and broken as a man�s body hit its front crumple zone, setting off the airbag. I step on the gas and speed into the night catapulting out of the tunnel and into the streets of suburbia. �Maim, I promise you that this car will protect you in the unlikely event that a man is throw against you windshield on the highway. We tested with simulated crash dummies, and the front steel frame can withstand a 200 lbs impact at 80 miles per hour. � --this is someone�s job to design such a safety device. Later that night I heard that �the first fatal accident occurred on the new lanes of 93 North, inside the Big Dig. The emergency teams responded well, but were not able to save one of the victims.� Why can�t we design our human rear crumple zone? I would like to get steel vertebrae to protect my spine. Instead Japan gives me Robo-kitty. I wanna shit on Robo-Kitty. He is real, but his death is not. | |||||||||||
