The usual story: anatomy of an accident waiting to happen

Some Friday-night hours that changed a young man's life

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By Joanna Palmén
     
      The summer of 1998 was warm, with long spells of beautiful weather. The temperature on August 14th climbed well above 20°C. It was a Friday, and 18-year-old Jarmo Tolonen from Oulu started work on a building site at 7 a.m.. Jarmo was a carpenter and was studying to become a building engineer.
      At around midday, Janne called. Janne was one of Jarmo's friends, and was doing his military service in Rovaniemi at the time. Janne said he'd got weekend leave, and he'd be coming down to Oulu. What about if they would go out in the evening to check out the Oulu night-life?
      "I figured that I could go out", says Jarmo. "As far as I can remember, the last time I'd been out drinking was at Midsummer, three or four weeks before."
     
      IT WAS A SUMMER WEEKEND NIGHT
     
     
Roughly half of all fatal accidents take place in summer traffic, 60% occur at weekends, and 40% of all fatal accidents occur between midnight and 7 a.m..
     
     
Jarmo had got his driving licence around the beginning of May that year. According to his father, once the 18-year-old Oulu boy had the piece of paper in his hand, the only way he could be prized out of the car was with a crowbar. Especially at weekends.
      Jarmo drove his mother's car, a red 1988 Toyota Corolla. He intended to buy his own wheels as soon as he had put together the money for a decent car. The summer evenings were spent with his mates - "cruising" on four wheels.
      "I would only come home to shower and change, have a quick bite to eat, and then I'd be off driving with mates. Sometimes it went quite late."
     
      JARMO HAD JUST SECURED HIS DRIVING LICENCE
     
     
According to insurance statistics, drivers with less than one year's experience behind the wheel are involved in four times as many traffic accidents as those who have been driving three years.
     
     
"It was just driving around, you know, the sort of normal cruising stuff."
      The locale of choice to start from was the big parking lot close to Oulu's old market.
      "We'd just hang out there in the car and chat. Then we cruised around the town on a sort of ring. Even now, Pohjantie is a pretty hot place for street-racing. Young guys drive there to check out how the car goes."
      Pohjantie means the urban motorway [E75] that runs through the centre of Oulu.
      But that evening the intention was for Jarmo to leave the car at home and head into town on the bus to hit the bars.
     
Jarmo picked Janne up from the train after he got off work, at around four in the afternoon.
      The two lads drove to the Alko liquor store to buy a bottle of Koskenkorva vodka, and then picked up some beers from the supermarket.
      Janne dropped in at home to change out of his army uniform and put on some civilian gear, and the two then headed on to Jarmo's parents' place. The boys intended to go to sauna.
      The whole family was at home at the Tolonen household. Jarmo's father, his mother, and Marjo, his 14-year-old sister.
     
      DRIVERS OF 18 YEARS OF AGE LEAD INJURY-ACCIDENT STATISTICS
     
     
Measured by the total number of all injury accidents, the category of drivers aged 18 years ranked the first. According to last year's statistics from Liikenneturva, Finland's expert organization in traffic safety, 18-year-old drivers caused 346 injury accidents in the course of the year. A total of 370 people died in road accidents in Finland in 2004. Of these, 74 were between the ages of 18 and 24. These numbers rose from 2003, despite a decline in overall fatalities.
     
     
The two boys in their late teens spent the evening by themselves, in the sauna and in Jarmo's room. They started in to the vodka and had a few beers. Every so often they stepped outside for a cigarette in the front yard.
      "The evening passed in listening to Janne's army stories and asking him what he'd been up to in Rovaniemi."
      The door to Jarmo's room was closed, the TV was on with the sound switched off, and the radio was tuned to a Finnish rock station.
      Jarmo put on a pair of jeans and a newly-bought brown shirt.
      They had to head into town before 11 p.m., because after that the bus company started charging the night tariff, which was double the price of a normal ticket. The boys caught the last possible bus at 22.30.
      It was a ride of about five kilometres from The Tolonens' house into the centre of Oulu.
     
      JARMO WAS A YOUNG MALE DRIVER
     
     
The share of 15-24-year-olds among all those injured in road accidents is around 30%, and this age-cohort also accounts for 17% of all road accident fatalities. The risk of dying in a road accident is six times greater among young men than among young women of the same age.
     
     
"The plan was just that we'd go into town and decide then which bar we'd make for. I guess we were already a bit high, but we certainly were not legless by any means."
      The pair wound up in a bar called Wäinö, on Kauppurienkatu. These days the site is occupied by a place called Hevimesta, but you can still see the old name for the bar in one window.
      "It wasn't as though it was a favourite watering-hole or anything. We just went where the fancy took us."
      The bar was not crowded even at around 11 p.m., and they did not run into any friends there.
      "We just sat and chatted together and carried on drinking shots. I guess things started to go pear-shaped from then on."
     
Little by little, the alcohol blurred their minds and their sense of time.
      They were drinking rum and cokes.
      And a few White Russians.
      They called up some friends. Where are you? We're sitting here in Wäinö.
      At some point, Jani joined them.
      At some point Janne disappeared by himself, to some other bar.
      At some point Jarmo's girlfriend showed up.
     
They had been going out together for just over a year.
      "That's not so long, I suppose, but it was a fair while anyway."
      There was an argument. Jarmo does not remember what it was about.
      There was some shouting, and it might be that the girlfriend actually bit Jarmo in the shoulder.
      At some point in the proceedings, Jarmo decided to go home.
      "I guess I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth staying around to fight."
     
Jani suggested that he would tag along. "The intention was to go home and polish off the booze that was left there, and then look at things afresh in the morning."
      Jani got one of his mates to give the boys a ride to Jarmo's house. Jarmo and Jani sat in the back, and Jani's brother and the designated driver were up front.
      "There was nothing special about the trip. I was a bit wired up by what had happened, but by the time we got home, I'd pretty much calmed down."
      The driver let Jani and Jarmo out and drove off with Jani's brother.
     
It was just before 2 a.m. on Saturday morning by this time, a dim and quiet night towards the end of the summer.
      The boys hung out in the yard for a minute or two, smoking cigarettes. Jarmo's recollections of the incident are a bit fragmented - an image here, an image there.
      "It just came to mind that hey, shit, why don't we go back into town? What are we doing here at home?"
      Jarmo and Jani could have got back to Oulu easily enough by calling up Jani's friend, who had only just dropped them off. He was sober, he wasn't fed up with his role as chauffeur-to-the-wasted, and he would certainly have come back if he'd been given a call.
     
      JARMO WAS SERIOUSLY DRUNK
     
     
The accident risk increases roughly 40-fold when the blood alcohol level rises beyond 150 mg/100ml [the Finnish lower limit for drink-driving is 50 mg/100ml of blood - as against 80mg/ml in the UK, for instance - and a reading of above 120mg/100ml automatically triggers a charge of aggravated drunken driving, which may carry a sustodial sentence]. Of all fatal accidents involving drunken drivers, some 38% feature young drivers
     
     
However, for some reason Jarmo got it into his head that he would take his mother's car. Jarmo had never previously driven under the influence.
      "It was a pretty big surprise to me afterwards. I mean, why I should have made that choice there and then? I guess, though, that I'd been so pissed off with things at some stage in the evening. It just seemed like the easier way, to take my Mum's car."
      The keys to the Corolla were in the house. Jarmo has no recollection of going in to get them, and no members of the family heard anything.
     
Jarmo got into the car and sat in the driver's seat. Jani followed and did not make any objections.
      When Jarmo was reversing the car out of the yard, the thought crossed his mind that he hoped nobody would wake up with the sound of the engine.
      "I thought that particularly if my Dad had woken up, then he'd have come rushing down and he would have dragged me bodily out of the car and given me an earful right there in the garden. So when I'd got out of the driveway and nobody had noticed anything, if felt as if this was all as easy as falling off a log."
      Jarmo pointed the car towards the city.
     
There are two routes from the Tolonen house into Oulu. Jarmo took the smaller of the roads, presumably because it was quieter, with less traffic on it.
      Jani fastened his seat belt and apparently dozed off in the front seat soon after they got moving.
      Jarmo did not have his belt on. During the summer he had taken to buckling up less and less.
      It was quiet in the car. Jarmo had only recently bought and installed a new CD-player in his mother's Corolla, but the removable front panel had been left at home. So he just listened to the sound of the gravel under the wheels. When he put his right foot down, the loose gravel rattled against the underside of the car.
      There was no real sensation of speed, just an even, quiet humming.
     
The gravel road gave way to asphalt, with a 40 km/hour speed limit. At its fastest, the Corolla was doing around 140-150 km/h.
      In other words about the limit for a 1988 Toyota when you floored it. Jarmo knew this from earlier trips.
     
      JARMO WAS DRIVING WAY OVER THE SPEED LIMIT
     
     
In fatal accidents involving young people, excessive speed is a factor in 40% of cases. Excessive speed in this context means at least 20km/hour over the speed limit for the stretch of road.
     
     
After about a kilometre on the asphalt, the road veered left into an S-bend.
      Jarmo turned the steering wheel into the bend, but the car did not respond.
      In an instant his head cleared completely and he understood what was happening.
      "I think I grasped that things were out of order. I'm not sure if I managed to hit the brakes. I just tried to turn the wheel. The car took off onto the right-hand verge and flipped over onto its right-hand side. "
      "I felt myself thrown over to the right. Then there was a complete white-out in my eyes, then black and stars and a roaring and banging in my ears."
      And then, the final impact.
      "Kind of like a jet fighter or a firecracker going off next to my ear."
      After the thud of impact, darkness and silence.
      The Corolla first hit a lamppost on the side of the road, but that didn't stop it. It took a solid pine tree to bring the car to a halt. The impact snapped the crown of the tree and brought it crashing to the ground next to the car.
     
      JARMO WAS NOT WEARING A SEAT-BELT
     
     
According to figures from Accident Investigation Teams [who examine the circumstances behind all fatal accidents], the use of a seat-belt would have saved the lives of more than half of those who died in road accidents during the last decade and who were not wearing a belt at the time of the crash.
     
     
Jani was strapped in, and remained in the car. Jarmo flew through the windscreen and landed more than 20 metres away in a field.
      "For three days after that I have no memory whatosever."
      It is now six and a half years since the accident. Jarmo tells his story in an Oulu café, only a few blocks from the former Wäinö bar where the tragic night began.
      Jarmo's voice is even and measured, and his Oulu dialect makes his speech sound relaxed.
      In the crash, Jarmo's seventh thoracic vertebra split neatly into two parts, closed up like a clamshell or a jacknife, and cut his spinal cord.
      This is why he sits now in a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down.
     
He carries a long diagonal scar leading upwards from the bridge of his nose and over his left temple, the product of his headlong flight through the windscreen, and he also has fragments of glass still embedded in his neck and spine.
      Jani, sitting asleep in the passenger seat, escaped from the crash with a few ugly bruises.
     
"The case went to court. I was charged with aggravated drunken driving and aggravated dangerous driving. No sentence handed down. They decided that the wheelchair was punishment enough. My licence was hung up to dry for six months", says Jarmo.
      Jarmo, now 25, lives in the centre of Oulu with his current girlfriend and a six-month-old German shepherd puppy. He is studying at Oulu Polytechnic, hoping to become an IT engineer.
      Outside the café stands Jarmo's blue Ford Focus. After the accident he had to go back to driving school again, and to learn how to drive in an entirely new way, without the use of his legs.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print in NYT weekly supplement, 4.3.2005


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Youngest drivers cause one fifth of fatal accidents in Finland (25.1.2005)

Links:
  Liikenneturva

JOANNA PALMÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
joanna.palmen@hs.fi