Friday, February 12, 2010

Oops

Okay, so I'm way behind on everything since we got back to Turkey. The dust bunnies are big enough to need names, I'm thinking the laundry might need to be sedated soon for our safety, and I've only once met my (self set) deadlines for this little writing gig I do to justify staying at home while my kid's at school.

But here's what happened not 2 minutes from my house a couple of weeks ago.




I'd love to know what was going through that driver's head as he approached that bridge. And that poor guy on the left who sees the truck coming, stops, probably thinks, "No way, that's not really going to happen."

Normally when Turks stop their cars and get out of them in the middle of the freeway, it makes me anywhere from extremely nervous to extremely pissed off. But in this case I can't help feeling it's really great how many people dropped whatever they were doing to run over and help.

Fortunately no one was killed, though a few people were pretty badly hurt. Fortunately schools were on vacation, plus the snow was keeping a lot of folks indoors so the bridge was relatively empty.

Also I just figured out how to post videos! Cool, man.

7 comments:

Nomad said...

Yippee I'm first! I am not sure if you remember this or if you were even here when it happened. But I recall about ten or more years ago, a coach line- between cities- proudly announced their new line of double-decker buses for tourists. Unfortunately someone forgot to measure the overpasses and bridges and on the first run, the bus slammed into a concrete bridge at 60 miles per hour, killing three or four tourists.
Frankly I don't see how there can be much excuse for things like that. In this case, what? long driving hours?
Do you have any info on the people on the walkway? By the way, on my blog, I posted the same thing but the clip was from a local US channel with "quirky" news of the day (before the weather) and they found it amusing. I thought, you creeps! What is worse being dumb or being insensitive jerks!

Stranger said...

Goodness, how could they forget to measure overpasses? I think I missed that one.

Last year, BE's family finished a lawsuit against the city that had been going on for over 10 years. When they were building the metro, they miscalculated and a building BE's family owned fell into the metro hole. A few people were killed. It took that long (and numerous bribes) to get the city to pay them for the building!

I don't know how serious the injuries were (3 or 4 people got hurt), but fortunately the bridge isn't very high. I expect it wasn't built of the strongest, heaviest materials either...

Unknown said...

This I think is the first time Beylikduzu has made it into the British press.

Stranger said...

Jeez, how could Beylikdüzü have stayed out of the international public eye for so long?

Funny, I saw the clip about the bridge on David's ELT World and didn't realize where it was (everything has a way of looking the same here). I didn't even realize which bridge it was till a few days later when BE pointed it out. Freaking jet lag, I was at home sleeping a lot that week. I assumed they were doing repairs after a bomb, which was the last incident near that bridge a few years back...

Paul said...

...and you just know what the people rushing over to the bridge would have said, as Turks behave very much like the English in this kind of situation:
'Oh dear, a bridge appears to have collapsed under you while you were walking on it, and now you find yourself trapped under several tons of glass and concrete.
Are you alright?'

Nomad said...

I think it was a Ray Bradbury story I read once where it was always the same ghastly group of people who would suddenly be standing around whenever there was an accident. They would appear out of nowhere and leave just as quickly. I always think of this when I see how quickly Turkish people react to any kind of mishap.

Stranger said...

Some friends and I used to stand on a crowded street in Bakırköy, looking up and pointing. Eventually a crowd would gather wondering what the commotion was. After a few minutes some old men would be sitting nearby drinking tea. Invariably, a fight would break out at the edges of the crowd. It wasn't just that it always happened that was astounding-- it was how fast it happened, every time.