It’s easy for those of us in the media to get fairly ’steeled’ or numb when covering all of the awful news stories.  Car crashes, farm disasters, drownings in lakes and rivers.

When coming back from visiting my wife’s parents in northeast Wisconsin last Saturday, we came upon a stretch of US Highways 18-151, just west of Madison.  I went to school at Wisconsin, so I’m fairly familiar with those highway miles.  We’re heading west, counting the hours and minutes to Cedar Rapids, when we encountered empty eastbound lanes in the other direction.  That’s rare.  18-151 is a fast road.  65 is the posted limit.  You can drive it in a comfortable 70 or 72 without feeling any loss of control.

The tow trucks on the other side of a foothill told the story.

I was commandeering the minivan in a clump of vehicles.  We all slowed to about 55.  We all looked left.  My wife caught her breath.  The kids looked up from their coloring book and Game Boy.  A mangled SUV told the story.

Windshield smashed into the front row.

“Whoever that was probably didn’t make it,” I remember saying under my breath.  Then it was back on to doing 70 but taking more than a few minutes thinking about our own mortality.

My resourceful wife then shuttled through her phone to try and find the news on what happened, if any was out there.

Two dead, both from Dubuque.  Here is the latest update on the story as I’m writing this.  Including a 13-year-old boy who was a Boy Scout.

At the time, we only knew that two had been killed and didn’t know where they were from.  Apparently, an RV zoomed through the median and hit the SUV where the victims were in.  Once the early facts came in, my wife and I took far too long lightly debating what, if anything, we could possibly do if we were in that second that required a half-second decision. 

What would I do?

I’d like to think that, if I couldn’t steer out of the way, I would, in a half second, be able to whip around the driver’s seat, take both hands and press them against the chests of my two children to lessen the impact on them. 

Take me but leave them.

I found myself in a similar spot nine years ago, when we lived in Duluth.  Childless and driving to the grocery store, a speeding car was running through a red light while we were on the green.  Seeing that a crash was inevitable, I reached out my right arm and, with all my might, I yelled “HANG ON” to my wife and put all of my strength in keeping her in her seat.  The car smacked us at 40 MPH before driving off.  Only our bank account was hurt.

At least I had about two seconds before impact.

Saturday’s deadly crash put a damper on the final three hours driving home.  My wife and I both knew that could have been us.  It wasn’t — as the crash actually happened about four hours before we even got to the scene, which shows the enormity of it all — but it was in our heads.

Then the flashbacks hit.  To the bodies I had seen as a news photographer in Topeka a dozen years ago, often on Friday or Saturday nights when I’d even be ahead of the police getting to crash scenes after bar time.  My first news shoot, was a deadly crash outside Topeka on a 90-degree Saturday in September.  19-year-old kid stared into the sun on the Interstate, on his way to see Mom & Dad from college.  I still remember the mess on that concrete pillar along I-70. 

Being 22 and not having any kids then, it doesn’t affect you as much as when you’re almost 35 and a father. 

It just has to.

I think of the handful of kids in the state who die in farm accidents — truly, accidents.  This is a part of doing what I do that I hope I’ll never be able to fully “detach” from.  It does make us human but it doesn’t mean always we enjoy it.

Take it easy out there for your summer travels and, as miserable and as fatalistic as it may sound, make a plan just in case you’re on the road and see an RV or a bus coming at you, full speed.  Maybe you get that half-second where you can make a lifelong difference for those you love.

- Chris