When I was younger I did one of many stupid things and ended up having to do some highway CS as a result. One day I got picked for the usually easier job of large-item pickup, just ride around in a 8-pak picking up big things or big things stuck in lanes for 8-hours. Next day I'm waiting to start another 8-hour service and the guy I was with the day before pulled up early and grabbed me again, there was a fatality accident at the bottom of the simi valley incline on the 118 early that morning (so thankfuly the road wasn't packed with other cars) and CHP was wrapping up their investigation, needing the debris and lanes cleared before reopening the freeway. A bunch of kids in a honda civic must of been going over 140 at impact comming down this steep grade. Impacted a concrete pylon in the median under an overpass, ricocheted across the lanes to the inclined shoulder, plowed up the 4:3 slope 30 feet, ricocheted - got airborne - and violently rolling - off the soundwall at the top of the incline back twords the freeway and away from the houses on the other side, cleared a large sign on the shoulder that topped at 14-feet above the road surface, impacted a 30-foot steel lightpole mid-air at tha 14-foot mark - "horseshoed" the lightpole shearing the bolts clean and taking it with the care down the road another 100-feet, the lightpole wrapped around the rolling (and likely at that time unrecognizable) civic caused a half dozen monstrous divits in the pavement, and the car finaly came to a stop 220 feet down the right shoulder from where it last left the highway sometime after ditching the light pole (which still had enough momentum in it to take out another 14' sign). Must of been over 50% of that car scattered about between the first impact point and its final resting spot. I'll spare the rest of the details but there was a lot of shoveling, plowing and fire hoseing that morning, we arrived at 8:15 and the freeway was finaly reopened about 11:30, everything cleared and patched except for the horse-shoed light pole... that was agreed to intentionaly leave laying very visibly on the shoulder there for over two-weeks (rather than back at the yard) until the new pole replacement arrived, for all to see and hopefuly a few to learn.
