PREFACE
When I started to write this account I began to understand the difficulty that other people had or will have in providing their accounts to us. Namely, personal accountability. When you describe an accident or health situation, you feel uncomfortable casting out blame to others, particularly your employer. If you made a mistake in driving, you don't want to admit it. It's embarrassing. Even if the event is out of your control (someone else causes it, a deer jumps in front of your vehicle, unexpected road hazards, etc.), you somehow feel responsible and look back and see how you could have prevented it.
It was difficult for me, too, when I wrote this personal account. I felt completely responsible at the time of the accident (described below), and I was thankful that I survived and did not harm anyone else. Now, however, I realize that my employer needs to share part of the blame, if not all of it, because I would not have been driving that day had I been allowed to telecommute. Furthermore, I would not have been pushing myself hard to get to work had I been allowed to perform my work from home. My employer *is* responsible for the accident, just as if my managers had been driving the car, themselves. They required that I commute to and from work, when I could have done the work just as well, probably much better, from the safety of my home workstation. Now that I realize they are mostly to blame, I don't feel quite as bad admitting that I may have exercised some bad judgment in the actual driving (by traveling on icy roads without studded tires), because my employer created the situation that put me in that circumstance in the first place. All drivers make mistakes from time to time. The more times you hit the road, especially under stressful conditions or during periods when hazards are greatest, the more chance you have of death or injury. You all need to know that, and now here's my story....]
MY STORY
On March 23, 1993 I was in my office at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was in the evening, after work, and I had just completed a note to my auto insurance company ["Dear California Casualty: Attached are copies of towing bills I incurred while traveling away from my home on March 14, 1993 at Jerome, Idaho..."]. I also sent off a short note to my motorist club ["Dear Shell: Enclosed is a copy of the Sheriff's Accident Report that you requested in order to continue processing my recent claim for Trip Continuation payments ($500) ..."].
It had been a challenging day and an even more challenging month. As always I had started my work day around 4am, because I liked to take advantage of using the Cray mainframe super computers during early morning hours when I had them almost to myself. It was good to have the accident behind me, but I was mad at myself for having canceled "full coverage" on our 1989 Castro Van the day after it was paid for. Since the accident had been "my fault" and the the van had been totaled, all we would receive was reimbursement for towing it to the junk yard and some of the expense of continuing my trek down to LANL after the accident.
I remember that I left our house very early on the morning of March 14, as I knew it would take two 12-hour days, at least, to reach Los Alamos. I lived near Burns on some acreage with my wife, Kate, and our kids. We had moved there about 4 years earlier, because we liked the area. We had camped in eastern Oregon many times, when our kids were growing up and I was going to school at Oregon State University. We knew we wanted to retire there, so we just decided to move earlier, that's all. We wanted our kids to get some "roots" in the community, so that when we were older, they might want to come back more often or even live nearby. However, I was still very loyal to LANL and my boss, and I really enjoyed my coworkers. So, I decided that I would keep working at LANL even though the commute was a bit of a hardship. I had recently started to advocate telecommuting, and at that time it looked like LANL management was somewhat receptive, so it seemed to me that it was just a matter of time before I'd be home more often with Kate and the kids, anyway. Boy was I wrong...
Anyway, back to the story. It was nearly spring, and because the weather had warmed up somewhat and the snow had pretty much melted away, I had removed our studded snow tires and replaced them with regular all-season radials. I didn't want to drive all the way to New Mexico with studs on, when I didn't need them. So off I went on my long journey to LANL. I had made this trek many times in the last couple years. It was nothing new. I would drive down as far as maybe Price, Utah, then get a motel room (usually Motel 6) and continue to LANL on the second day. No sweat, just lots and lots of hours on the highway. But this day was different. As the sun rose in the horizon, I was nearing Ontario, Oregon. The roads looked dry and the air was crisp and clear and clean. What a beautiful sunny day it would be. I had my third cup of coffee and munched on some "baby" carrots to keep alert. It was comfortable in our Castro Van. We had bought it new, and Kate was very proud of it. However, she let me drive it on these long trips, because it was a bigger rig than our other car - a 1992 Go Metro, so she thought I would be safer. We had worked hard and paid it off in just three years, and I can remember how nice it was to have those car payments behind us and also not have to pay for full insurance coverage anymore. I was always a fairly careful driver, so I thought liability was sufficient. I never thought I'd get into an accident that wasn't someone else's fault... boy was I wrong again.
As I neared Jerome, Idaho, the sun had risen above the horizon, and its rays filled the van with warmth and light. I put the cruise control on about 65 and moved hurriedly on down the freeway (I-94) my eyes straight ahead, determined to make another successful trip to my workplace. All of a sudden I heard the engine speed up, then for a fraction of a second it felt like I had a blowout. I touched the brake lightly to release the cruise control and at the same instant I notice I was going sideways, rotating to the left out of control down the freeway. I tried to turn the van back to the right and stop the rotation, but it was like my steering wheel had been disconnected - there was no response at all. I remember that helpless feeling as the van rotated 180 degrees and I left the right side of the pavement at full speed sliding into the ditch backwards. At that moment I realized I was going to die. I just held on lightly to the steering wheel, thinking that maybe I had some control, but that whatever happened next was in someone else's hands.
The van flipped once it caught something in the ditch, then it rolled and rolled, I don't know how many times. After what seemed an eternity, it landed upright with a tremendous but solid crash onto all four wheels. The force of this downward motion blew all four tires off the van and flattened my bucket seat back against the floor. Then it was completely silent, except for the sound of my engine. I didn't know what to expect. I moved an arm, then carefully I moved my head. I didn't feel any pain, and I felt completely awake. Slowly I moved up on one elbow - my legs were ok! I could move them both. I reached up to the steering column and felt for the keys - I wanted to turn the engine off in case there was a chance of igniting some fuel. I turned it off. Then I unfastened my seat belt and got up. I didn't seem to be injured at all. I pushed the drivers door open. It was all bent up, but I managed to get it open enough to squeeze myself out. Once outside, I stood back and surveyed my situation. Our wonderful van - Kate's pride and joy - looked like many I had seen at the junk yards over the years. And I remember I always wondered what happened to the people inside them. Well, I seemed to be one of the lucky ones. I looked at my hands and arms and legs. I felt my chest and moved around a bit. I couldn't find a scratch anywhere - it was a miracle. I was not destined to die this time. My number had not come up.
Now my only focus was on putting all the pieces back together, surviving this accident was only part of what needed to be done. I was a "doer", and I knew that I still had something to do - I had to go to work at LANL. So, I turned my thoughts away from the wonderment at my being alive and uninjured and toward the task at hand. I grabbed all my briefcases and my "MacPortable" computer and rushed up toward the edge of the freeway to hitch a ride. A trucker picked me up, I reported the accident to the sheriff who was surprised I was alive, arranged for a tow truck to haul the van to the junk yard (it was beyond "totaled"), got a lift to the Twin Falls airport, got a flight to New Mexico, and I was in my office at LANL about six hours later. Back at work.
That same day within 30 minutes of my accident there had been 6 other accidents on the same stretch of freeway. As I recall, they all involved "black ice" and three or four people were hospitalized as a result. I had been lucky - no one was hurt and there was no property damage (except my van). I have a much healthier respect for icy road conditions now.
THE COST OF WHAT HAPPENED
I nearly lost my life in that accident. I lost a vehicle we had paid $17000 for with all the options we had wanted for so many years. I lost a lot of personal belongings. I also lost my pride at having never been in an accident. It changed my perception of what can happen to people on the highways.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED
I remember after the accident my only concern was getting back to work. I did not want to worry Kate, so I did not call her until I was "safely" back in my office at the Lab. When I did finally call her, I tried to make a joke of the accident and that I had lost one of my "nine lives". Kate was very happy I was alive and amazed that I had not been hurt. She wasn't too thrilled about losing the van, though. At the time I looked at the accident as a necessary part of getting my work done. It was part of the risk I had to take. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder...
Today, as I write this account, I am still amazed that I'm alive. It's hard for me to believe it. I can still feel that helplessness of sliding on black ice out of control backwards down the freeway at 65 miles per hour. Although I still realize that I could have prevented the accident, I now hold LANL fully responsible for it. And the results could have been a lot worse. I could have been killed or seriously injured, and I could have killed or seriously injured someone else, had I veered off the other direction and crashed into oncoming traffic. I was lucky, and so was my LANL management. They required that I commute to/from my work, even though I could just as easily have performed my work from home, even then. I was doing computer code simulation and analysis work. That work involved developing input decks for a large computer code called "TRAC" that was (and still is, I believe) recognized as the best thermal-hydraulics analysis code in the world for simulating hypothetical accidents in commercial nuclear power plants. Most, if not all, of the work necessary to accomplish that task was better done from the safety of my home. I knew it even then, but I did not push the point, because I knew that there would have to be a period of "management adjustment" before telecommuting would become officially acceptable at Los Alamos. What was strange was that many people who performed engineering and scientific work, like myself, were "allowed" to work from our homes, unofficially. There was no lab policy that permitted this, it was just widely done and accepted by management. In fact, most managers worked from their homes on occasion, as well. Many of us were even provided phone lines paid for by the Lab. There were many others, technicians and clerical staff, however, that were *not* allowed to take their computers home and work there instead of their Lab office. I always thought that inequity of treatment to my coworkers was wrong - it appeared to me and to others I spoke with that this was an inconsistent and frivolous application of employee "benefits".
Today, although I'm still amazed at my luck in surviving that accident of '93, I'm even more amazed that Los Alamos National Laboratory, a laboratory that has some of the best and brightest minds in the world, still clutches desperately to an archaic and dangerous management style. It's bad enough that this "control" management style prevents people from telecommuting, thereby allowing the continued waste of energy, pollution of our precious environment and the tearing apart of community and family, but it's a CRIME that this management style continues to place people at risk of death and injury.
LANL management could easily have implemented, encouraged and facilitated telecommuting back in 1989, when I first started to advocate it to my management. Today, at this very moment, they can even more easily implement telecommuting. They refuse, with almost a cavalier attitude toward off-site activities, and they continue to place people at a risk of death and injury as a result. If that is not yet legally classified as a crime, then it is at least immoral in my book. I hope the LANL managers who I have contacted with my safety concerns and other people who could have taken leadership action regarding telecommuting are held fully accountable for their lack of action. If they do not act now, they cannot use the excuse that they did not know. They know, they can understand, if they just take the time, and they can take effective action. If they don't, they are criminals, perhaps even murderers, in my opinion.
I hope that others of you will share your stories. Remember, even though you may believe you have done something wrong that created your accident or health problem, you are not alone. There are millions of other people who have felt the same way. However, you must realize that your employer is to blame, perhaps much more so than you, if they required you to commute, and if you could just as easily have performed your duty for them without commuting.
Please share your story.