Saturday 6 April 2013

Skootamata River - bridge and roadside memorial near Tweed

Skootamata River

These are more photos from our Daycaytion trip. I broke up the 178 photos over a few posts.

I was looking for open water and birds.
I lucked in and found otters harassing geese!
My video post of the otters sliding along the ice.
When we arrived home, I took the cats for a walk, joyful for the dry leaves and warm ground.
Back to our trip...

You know you drive along, and spot a memorial and wonder what happened. With the Internet, you can count on finding out the details if you insert the right search terms. Hooray for small town newspapers, too.

I stopped and took some photos of this beautiful spot. The memorial was so sad. You could tell he was young by his friend's comments. The vehicle took out the side of the cement bridge, then fell into the Scootamata River.

It turns out that 16-year-old Cody Wood of Northbrook died in hospital, but there were two others with life-threatening injuries who were in the same car. The incident happened on Flinton Road, northeast of Tweed.

We never let the kids drive with others when they were new drivers. There are too many distractions and they were inexperienced drivers. Until driving become automatic, meaning that the higher-level, prefrontal cortex takes over, moving the functioning from brain stem, reptilian brain, you struggle with decisions.
You know how you are preoccupied with something, and don't really remember the drive home? That is more sophisticated part of the brain that governs executive function. Higher-level thinking skills are one of the first to go when someone has dementia symptoms: forgetfulness, losing your way home, unable to manage technology, etc.

There is much to worry about aside from checking your mirrors, keeping an eye out for animals, or other drivers. As we drove this road, we found many driving at top speed, several of which passed us. We pulled over a couple of times, too.
Slow down out there. Somebody loves you, or your victim.

Crash on Flinton Road, north of Hwy 7

Oct 31, 2012 – Central Hastings O.P.P. say the car went off Flinton Road in Elzevir Township and struck a cement bridge, before landing in the Scootamata River. It happened about 1:40 in the afternoon. One of the victims was air-lifted to hospital. Flinton Road, North of Elzevir Road, was road was closed until 9 p.m.

4 comments:

Christine said...

Very sad Jenn. We had a similar accident down here recently they just had a funeral for the teen. 3 others in the vehicle survived the rollover into the Don River.

Powell River Books said...

To lose life so young is always so sad. - Margy

Kay said...

This is so very sad.

Unknown said...

Forever rip woody💪❤