Lost control: portrait of one road accident out of all too many

A summer day began with heavy drinking, continued with a high-speed joyride, and ended wrapped around a tree. Three young passengers were injured. Pasi Halinen, passed out drunk and in the trunk of the car, explains what happened.

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By Minna Passi
     
     
The road accident described here is all too typical. It took place on Saturday July 21st, 2007. That weekend, the carnage on the Finnish roads was such that three young people getting injured in a high-speed crash into a tree merited only the briefest of mentions in Helsingin Sanomat. Six people died and more than 20 were injured in the course of the weekend. Many of the accidents involved young people, alcohol, and reckless speed. Sadly, it is likely there will be similar weekends this summer, too. The attrition rate for young Finnish drivers, particularly in rural areas, is worryingly high: we may have produced more than our share of champion rally-drivers, but the combination of youth, speed, drink, a cavalier attitude to seat-belts, and tree-lined roads is also lethal.
     
      "We started drinking first thing in the morning at my cousin's place in Leivonmäki. It was a warm day and there were a group of us. We were drinking beer, I think, and we put some sausages on the grill.
      Later in the day we headed out to a little rock-festival do that had been arranged by a guy from the village, at his cottage. There was more drinking, we went to sauna, and we grilled some sausage and steaks, and listened to a few local bands.
      I guess there were about 30 or so people there, most of them a bit older than me. It was pretty nice.
      I was loaded, I know that. So loaded that my memories of it are a bit vague. We'd moved on to spirits by that stage. I reckon we drank just about everything there was. Pretty nearly everyone was well away."
     
"At some point in the evening I split and went into the village with Jarno. There we ran into this guy who had his car along and was heading back to the cottage to pick up some other people to take them on to an after-party party at a cousin's place.
      We asked him for a ride. I knew he was sober.
      So we went back to the cottage again, and the others got in. That was when I climbed into the trunk. I figured I'd take a bit of a nap in there. I crashed out in the trunk of the car."
     
Transcript of Police Interrogation 6160/R/8504/07:
     
      The driver gets annoyed, because the drunks in the back are spilling beer on the interior of the car. He accelerates to around 100km/hour, although the junction with Highway 4 is approaching fast. The other young people in the car try to get the driver to slow down, without effect.
      The driver says that it is all the same to him if everyone dies, or who gets killed. He crosses Highway 4 without reducing speed.
      At the scene of the accident, measurements were taken of the skid-marks left by the vehicle's tyres on the road surface. Immediately after the junction, approximately 10 metres from crossing of the two roads, are black skid-marks of around 30 metres in length, veering to the left and ending in the sand on the left-hand side of the road over the edge of the carriageway.
      There are more tracks gouged in the sand for approximately five metres, leading to a group of trees. The car had struck a tree and bounced onto the left lane of the carriageway, measured by the direction of travel, approximately 14 metres from the point of impact. The car was on its roof and facing in the direction from which it had come.
     
     
"I came to when the car stopped moving. First I shouted out 'Are we there, then?'
      Then I noticed that I had the carpet above my head, and the spare wheel was underneath it. At first I didn't hear anything. A bit of panic crept in then. My head was hurting like hell.
      Then I started hearing my name being called. The driver came, looking a bit uncomfortable, to pull down the back seat so that I could crawl out of the trunk. There was no way I was going to get out by any other means.
      I didn't really react to anything. Maybe I was a bit confused and embarrassed, and I think I probably lit a cigarette straightaway. The police hadn't turned up by this point and everyone who had been in the car was conscious.
      Marja had put her head through the windscreen. She had a big cut on her head and she was crying and mumbling incoherently. She may have been in shock. Nobody had actually broken anything. Kari had also smacked his head on the window and he had small bits of glass in his scalp.
      I'm not sure who called the police."
     
"I think maybe we went on drinking while we waited for the police to arrive.
      They didn't do a lot of moralising there and then, but they did wonder what I'd been doing getting into the trunk.
      The ambulances would have liked to take the lot of us off to get checked out, but not all of us felt like going. Jarno and I went to the cousin's place. We did a bit of speculating as to what had got into the driver.
      If there'd been a truck coming down Highway 4, it would have been goodnight and good luck for everyone, right there and then. We got lucky, I guess. I had this big cross-shaped bruise on my head and my back was aching, but I didn't go to the doctor at any stage in the proceedings."
     
"The police quizzed me over the phone about what had happened, a month or two after the accident. Since then I've heard nothing from them.
      I heard from some mates that the driver lost his licence when it went to court. A few were there at the trial - at least the girl who was most badly beaten up."
     
     
Judgement at Jyväskylä District Court, No. R08/1741:
     
      The charges of aggravated endangerment of traffic safety, traffic offences, and negligent causing of actual bodily harm have been upheld through the driver's admission of guilt.
      The circumstances surrounding the count of aggravated endangerment of traffic safety were of such gravity and danger to life that the defendant must face a prison sentence. A reasonable consequence of all the offences contained in the indictment is 40 days' imprisonment, the sentence to be suspended.
      Other legal sanctions: the defendant is banned from driving for a period until 30.7.2009.
     
     
"It did occur to me that I could have died back there. The cross that I got on my head made me think a bit. But I didn't exactly discover the faith.
      For the first few months, nobody got on very well with the driver. Now most of the bunch are on pretty good terms with him. What's happened, happened, that's about it.
      I haven't ridden in the trunk of a car since then."
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.5.2009
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Youngest drivers cause one fifth of fatal accidents in Finland (25.1.2005)
  HS survey: Almost a third of young men admit to having driven under influence of alcohol (24.5.2004)
  Doubling in number of accidents caused by youth drunk driving (20.2.2007)
  More and more young drivers have to renew their driving licences (30.8.2005)

See also:
  Finnish racing drivers appeal for road safety (12.3.2009)
  The usual story: anatomy of an accident waiting to happen (8.3.2005)

Links:
  Liikenneturva, the central organisation for Finnish traffic safety work

MINNA PASSI / Helsingin Sanomat
minna.passi@hs.fi