By KATH GANNAWAY
IT WOULD be easy to put Lauren Florence’s escape from serious injury last week down to dumb luck … dumb good luck.
But that’s not the whole story, according to tow truck driver Paul Keedle who has seen lots of road crashes over the last 20 years where good and bad luck have had a role to play.
He rates experience as a contributing factor to the outcome which resulted in a relatively minor injury to Lauren’s hand, and no collateral damage to other cars on the road.
Lauren was driving just minutes from home late on Thursday afternoon last week when a massive gum tree crushed her Toyota Hilux twin-cab.
That’s not just product placement. Lauren and Paul agree, any less substantial vehicle would not have survived as well.
Lauren, 28, a personal trainer at the RACV Club, drives the section of the Healesville-Yarra Glen road almost every day.
As she came around a bend, she saw the tree falling.
“I saw it coming, but because of the corner, I didn’t see it until I was about from here to the fence away,” she says, indicating about 10 metres.
“My first thought was to brake, but I realised if I braked it would be on top of me and I kept going,” Lauren said.
Paul estimates that the car travelled a further 30 metres or so, avoiding an embankment, and other cars.
No mean feat, as Lauren admits, with her ducking down to avoid the roof that was crushing in as the tree slid along the passenger side of the car.
There was an anxious moment as Lauren couldn’t open the door, but, thankfully it was short with another motorist helping pull it open as she pushed from the other side.
Looking over the car at the Yarra Glen Towing depot on Sunday – just hours before the lucky/unlucky 28-year-old headed off for a snow-boarding holiday to Japan – Paul said her age and experience shouldn’t be dismissed in what was a good outcome from such a potentially deadly situation.
“You can say it’s instinctive, but it’s also age,” he said.
“If that was an 18-year-old, it would have been a different story.
“They could have steered into oncoming traffic or gone off the side of the road and rolled it.
“How the hell you did all that with the car like this is amazing,” he said to Lauren.
Passengers would not have fared so well either – more good luck, but a sobering thought for Lauren.
Anticipation and driving to the conditions – slowing down – is one of the things police push when it’s windy or raining, but none of those influences were there on Thursday.
If there is a lesson from it all, it’s just that getting through that peak danger time – 18 to 26 – pays dividends.
And, having a big, strong, vehicle.
“Everyone teased me when I bought ‘my truck’, Lauren said. “But it’s paid off.”
