Dangerous stretch of road

Even before we moved to Eureka, we had heard about some serious car accidents which occurred on the stretch of road between Eureka Springs and Berryville. The highway is kind of curvy, but not too bad. When looking at the police accident reports, every accident was caused by one of two things.

Either the driver was going too fast and couldn't negotiate a curve, driving off the edge of the road - Or the driver crossed the middle yellow lines during a curve and hit an on-coming vehicle. Another very disturbing fact is that every person that was not wearing their seatbelt and got in an accident there has been killed. And yet, people continue to speed and do not wear seatbelts.

On Saturday, November 18th, we witnessed a fatal car accident on this road. We were in the right lane going about 50 miles per hour. Then, a car passed us on the left, coming inches from side-swiping us, doing about 100 miles per hour.

About 20 feet ahead of us was a curve in the road, and the other car just lost control and went right off the edge of the road. Then they hit some gravel and spun sideways, then hit a ditch which propelled the car up about 30 feet in the air. It flipped twice in the air and landed in a shallow ditch.

The passenger was not wearing his seatbelt, so he was thrown from the vehicle and died almost instantly. The driver was still conscious in the car, but she stopped breathing for a few minutes just as the ambulance got there and thankfully, they were able to revive her. Then she was transferred to a helicopter to take her to a hospital.

This experience has affected our whole family to some degree. Our young children saw the whole thing, so they have lots of questions. I can't get the visual out of my head and have felt nauseous since then. It just really makes you realize how fragile life is and that everything can change in a matter of seconds.