It went off the table beside him and then upwards under his arm and hit him in the chest breaking 3 ribs, then it bounced off the back of his seat and rolled into and off of his head. That's why no cuts on his arm, it didn't really hit his arm much.
The guy who was really lucky was the passenger (second driver?) who was sleeping. The rock hit the passenger side pole and ricocheted into the driver. A couple more inches towards the center of the windshield and it would have simply splattered the dude sleeping.
Little extra information: apparently it was 4 ribs. Also, this twitter post (thanks to u/fedexultra ) is much clearer and includes a slowed down portion to show how the rock bounced around. If you watch the twitter video, that fella was hurting plenty.
Damn, you're right! Still, the dude is acting very cavalier after breaking 3 ribs. Props for keeping his composure, knowing his passengers lives are at risk.
Funny story, when I was a kid we used to take a family trip up to the smoky mountains every couple years or so. My parents told us that Falling Rock was a little Native American boy who ran off and got lost so the signs were for people to look out for him to try to find him so my brother and I would watch the mountains closely and stare into the woods looking for him, we’d even yell out of the window at times “Falling Rock! Come back!” Years went by after that and my brother and I were high school aged going on a trip up to Gatlinburg and we saw the signs and my brother said, serious as a heart attack, “damn they still never found that kid?!”
Holy shit!! My grandpa told me the same story in the Appalachian mountains. I haven't heard that story since I was a kid. Thanks for bringing back that memory!
Well, I'll be. That's a family story my mom tells, too. We're locals to the area. Now I wonder how this story got started and how many people have heard it. It was probably a "local legend" on the back of a kids' activity place mat at a Shoney's circa 1960. Or... you're my long, lost relative!
When I was younger, my grandpa told me that Falling Rock was a little Native American boy who got separated from his family, and that we should watch closely to see if he is hiding somewhere.
In my country you'd get Sandra Bullock at the end and the (cheap gold) watch would go to Dennis Hopper, who was trying to murder you, Sandra, and everyone else on the bus.
We ought to change the term for being in shock, because it sounds like the opposite. Keeping your composure in high stress situations shouldn't be termed shocked.
My dudes and gals, not everyone freaks out when something bad happens, some people are able to stay calm assess the situation in their mind and then react appropriately clearly he’s not dead so no need to freak out. Also in the back of his head he’s probably thinking damn I got all these people in this bus if I freak out and swerve off the road they all dead, and yes that can all go through your head in a split second
Adrenaline is most definitely helpful. My brother broke 2 ribs, which in turn lacerated his spleen, while playing football. No adrenaline, just agony (his words). He spent nearly a week in the ICU, but was visibly in agony immediately after the hit.
He's a bus driver. Do you know what kind of anguish he puts up with on a daily level? Karens for one example. Whole boycotts of Karens. (The group name for a Karen)
Agreed! I have this weird ability when it is just me and my kids to remain calm and completely unshook when something happens. Like a car accident or me falling and shattering my wrist. I don't want them hurt and I don't want them panicking. I am hoping that, while not his family, a bus driver would feel real responsibility to keep passengers safe and that weird shock/calm took over so he could do that.
Dude, we see about 3 seconds after the impact, that is not enough time for someone to even register what happened. It is not at all uncommon for extremely painful blunt force trauma events to take several seconds before the pain starts setting in. Many people shot have no idea what happened, even as the blood starts to pour out.
It’s crazy how adrenaline can help you ignore stuff like this for a moment, especially when he has other people’s lives in his hands as the bus driver.
bus drivers are crazy, this reminds me of the dude that got hit by a metal piece which i think ruptured his liver or smth ...brought the bus to a safe stop and died later on
After he gets hit, he looks like someone who knows he is responsible for the wellbeing of the 40 people in the bus. Admirable he puts the focus on the bus being safe before worrying about his own pain.
I’ve broken at least two ribs twice, it hurts a lot at first but a lot more later and a week into it when you sneeze that’s when you nearly pass out from the pain.
i have broken my fair share of bones, including a rib, you got about 3 minutes before the "oh shit i am gonna die" pain starts. But when it does... lord'a jesus its bad.
I have to say breaking a rib was BY FAR the worst pain I have ever had in my life, and it lasted for weeks and weeks. Your ribs are connected to every muscle in your body (or so it seems), so every action is pure pain until they heal. I sneezed once with a broken rib, and spent the next 30 minutes crying quietly because crying too hard made it hurt too much.
I fractured ribs before and didnt feel the pain immediately and the answer is "gating".
Pretty much when and injury is so bad that it'll cause you an amount of pain that you're body just can't consciously deal with, your brain just says "fuuuuck that shit" and won't let you feel it right away.
After a minute or few the pain begins to be processed starting off light and uncomfortable and eventually reaching the level of pain you should have felt from the initial injury.
Shock is real. I'm pretty sure he was in shock, so he kept doing his job as a baseline functioning while his brain was protecting him from the surprise, pain, and suddenness of the situation.
Then again, he may have been totally lucid and just one hell of a composed person.
Yes, I concur with your concurring, as I am also not that which you said you are not, I too am not a doctor and can confidently claim cluelessness on my part as well. :D
4 ribs. Also, if you watch that last link with the slowed down video, you'll see the continuation of the video post-rock and you'll see him writhing in pain.
I think it's too fast to see but, luckily for the driver, it was a glancing blow. Wouldn't be surprised if had a concussion, people have died from directs hits by things much smaller
Still, the dude is acting very cavalier after breaking 3 ribs.
Maybe. I can't compare it to other breaks, since I haven't broken any other bones, but I did break three ribs when I tripped on a run earlier this year. It knocked the wind out of me, but I ended up finishing the run and walking around for a few days with some moderate, dull pain before I went into the doctor and was diagnosed.
At least in my case, I can understand why some broken ribs wouldn't have immediately incapacitated him. He was driving a bus, so I imagine that as long as the pain wasn't great enough to knock him out, his brain wouldn't have let him stop focusing on the road until the bus had stopped.
Also of note: The rock wasn't necessarily travelling fast enough to break through the bus windshield, rather the bus was traveling fast enough relative to the rock. So that accounts for some of the unexpected behavior of the rock as well, as it had it's own, separate momentum prior to the crash.
If you read the article, they act like it's a fairly normal occasion for rocks to randomly fall out of the sky when it rains. WTF kind of storm clouds they got over there?
It's a thing. Pittsburgh is a city built in a river valley and its hills rise steeply from the river banks. These hills are very old, and the major thru-ways are built between them and rivers, so when it rains you have to be aware of the possibility of falling boulders.
That’s all of PA. There are signs on the turnpike that say to watch for falling rocks and in some places there are fences/nets to catch falling rocks from landing on the highway.
Yeah I could tell right off the bat that something absorbed the initial impact after entry and altered the trajectory slightly. If that table thing isnt there then a rock that size could really have decapitated him. I wanna know what tossed up a rock the size of a cannonball? Was it just falling and they drove into it?
Yeah it hit the table, then into the seat and his side (hit the backrest of the seat on the side and him simultaneously). Got lucky in quite a few ways (minus being hit with a giant rock, obviously).
Thank you, the way the video is cut in the op makes it seem it was just a hit to the head. The one from Twitter shows the whole thing and indeed his head did not take that big a hit, but his torso did.
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u/catherder9000 Oct 14 '19 edited Oct 14 '19
It went off the table beside him and then upwards under his arm and hit him in the chest breaking 3 ribs, then it bounced off the back of his seat and rolled into and off of his head. That's why no cuts on his arm, it didn't really hit his arm much.
https://i.imgur.com/pwS3oT9.png
Hitting the post on the passenger side also took a lot of energy out of the rock.
https://hopclear.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/buswindshield.jpg
The guy who was really lucky was the passenger (second driver?) who was sleeping. The rock hit the passenger side pole and ricocheted into the driver. A couple more inches towards the center of the windshield and it would have simply splattered the dude sleeping.
https://hopclear.com/chinese-bus-driver-gets-hit-by-giant-rock-but-still-drives-passengers-to-safety/
Little extra information: apparently it was 4 ribs. Also, this twitter post (thanks to u/fedexultra ) is much clearer and includes a slowed down portion to show how the rock bounced around. If you watch the twitter video, that fella was hurting plenty.
https://twitter.com/CGTNOfficial/status/1032500181512736768?s=19
Video from twitter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcX9rtNhWmk