Raffel Road Accident - More (or less) detail

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
June 6, 2009

If you read this morning's short article in the Northwest Herald about yesterday's accident at the entrance to Woodstock North High School, you would certainly form a different impression of how it occured.

The driver's 2008 Toyota RAV4 "left the roadway, rolled down an embankment and struck a tree."

Not hardly. The car left the roadway and, after traveling down the slight embankment, rolled over a concrete-and-metal drainage grate, through weeds, up the embankment to the entrance driveway, ran over a young tree and its support posts and stopped more than a football-field length from the point where the vehicle left the road.

The driver, Rebecca Gamble, 52, Marengo, was treated and released at Centegra Hospital - Woodstock, and the article confirmed that the baby, 10 months old (no name or relationship stated in the newspaper article) was apparently not injured, which was my casual observation yesterday.

This was not a minor accident of a vehicle's just leaving the roadway. Drive by Woodstock North High School and see the tire rub mark on the curb near the beginning of the right-turn lane. That's where the vehicle left the roadway. Then note the distance to the median in the center of the entrance driveway.

Did the driver panic and step down on the accelerator instead of the brake? Had she just taken her foot off the accelerator, the car would have stopped long before climbing the embankment, knocking down the three metal fence post supports for the young tree and spinning to a stop in the roadway. The vehicle obviously continued at considerable speed until it reached the entrance drive.

No mention is made in the article of any ticket(s) issued or pending.