Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land and Commercial Real Estate Blog

Karen and I were done showing condos in Summerlin to a couple of investors from Hawaii, Cecilia and Michael, and were returning to the Realty One Group’s office on West Charleston Boulevard.

West Charleston Boulevard is a six lane street and the speed limit is 45 miles per hour and we were traveling on the west direction in the rightmost or slow lane. I believe that I was driving at the speed limit and a SUV was driving a bit more than a car length in front of me in the middle lane. Karen and Cecilia were discussing a condo that she really liked. 

About 70-100 yards west of Rampart I heard a thud and to my horror saw a girl flying about 5 feet in the air and 10-15 feet from the right to land right in front of my car. She was 15-20 feet away at the time. I never saw this girl since the SUV and another car in the third lane completely blocked her, she appeared out thin air. I floored the brake and turned a hard right to miss her, there was no time to avoid hitting her by just braking only, as the car stopped about 15-20 yards past where she hit the ground.

 

Turns out that a teenage girl decided to go across the Charleston Boulevard, which is a six lane street on a bike that was clearly too small for her. The lady who was in the far left lane  had seen her, honked the horn and stopped, told me that she wasn’t even looking at the oncoming traffic and  was hit by the car in the middle lane, the back tire of her bike was the point of impact and why she was flying through the air. She eventually got up, crying and screaming and was combative with the medical personnel from an ambulance that finally took her. She made a few fatal mistakes. One is to try to cross Charleston while not in a pedestrian lane, another by riding the bike and not walking it across and another by not looking at oncoming traffic. Death missed her by .3 seconds. The reason I keep mentioning .3 seconds is that a car travels about 76 feet per second at 45 miles per hour and she was no more that 15-20 feet in front of me when I saw her.

 

Funny how we get tested in our life and end up doing the unthinkable, given the injuries that I sustained in another auto accident 13 years ago, my absolute nightmare situation is to see another wall coming at me at high speed and me having no control over the car. Last time it happened (I was a passenger) we hit a rebar re-enforced wall so hard that it exploded and I got badly injured. After many surgeries, cortisone and other shots and thousands of pills, I am still dealing with pain and discomfort on a daily basis.

I could not think of any circumstances that would make me voluntarily hit a wall or tree or a pole head on. But I was not given much of a choice here, I had less than .3 seconds to decide and act. I wish I could tell you that I made a conscious decision at that time to miss her, I did not, at times like this who you are decides how you will act, no time to think. This I can tell you that I knew if I hit her, she was dead.

 

Anyway, for some reason when one is in a mortal situation, time slows down, so somehow I completely missed her, left my lane and somehow found the sidewalk and found myself trying to avoid trees. Miraculously, I stopped the car without hitting any trees or damage to anyone. Check out the tire tracks in the pictures. I did the steering while applying full brakes, thank GOD for ABS.

 

She would have been 23^rd traffic fatality in Metro’s jurisdiction this

year. But that number went to another woman. Below are the details

“ Metro’s Fatal Accident Detail says a dark late-model Ford pickup struck a woman around 10 p.m. on Lake Mead Boulevard near Nellis. 

The female victim, still unidentified, was crossing Lake Mead mid-block when she was hit.  After hitting the woman, the driver of the pickup continued eastbound fleeing the scene. When paramedics arrived the woman was pronounced dead.”

Thanks to GOD I wasn’t the one doing the killing, it would have destroyed me.