Saved by "A Flash of Light"

I was directing traffic in Banff, Alberta, one day, at a minor traffic accident, when a passing motorist rolled down his window and asked, “Was anyone hurt in that accident where the car went through the guard rail and down the cliff?” “What accident and where?” I enquired.

I quickly obtained a good description of where the accident occurred, thanked the driver for the information and waved him on.

Once the damaged cars had been cleared from the intersection, I got on the car radio and contacted the dispatcher in the Calgary sub-division. They had no reports of any accident as I described. At that point I contacted the Canmore Detachment, as the accident scene was in their area. They had no knowledge of the accident.

I carefully explained where the accident was located in the mountains, on a very sharp curve, where there was a very steep drop off down the face of the cliff. The key was to look for the any damage to the guard rails.

Within the hour I heard radio traffic and realized they had found the vehicle with the driver still in it and a rescue was taking place. After that I was distracted with other duties and did not hear any additional details.

About a week later I was on the phone with the Canmore Detachment on another incident, and when I was done I asked them about the accident where the car went over the cliff.

I learned that they had a great deal of trouble locating the car as there were no tire marks and no damage to the guard rails. The vehicle could not be seen by anyone standing on the road at the point where the car went over the edge.

The driver of the car that first reported the accident to me, was very careful to point out that he noticed the wrecked car only because the sun was reflected off the windshield, when they were about a half mile away and approaching a u-shaped curve. They were at the top end of one side of the curve and the wreck was at the top end of the opposite side of the U.

It took some time to realize that the car could only be spotted for a second, in one specific place on the highway, some distance away and down the side of the mountain. Many spruce and pine trees hid the vehicle. Both before and after passing that point, it was impossible to see the wreck.

Eventually tire tracks were found in the dirt, where the vehicle had gone between the guard rail posts without touching any one of them. The car dropped down the steep slope about a hundred feet and became lodged on its side between the mountain and the base of a large pine tree.

Mountain climbing gear had to be used to lower a rescuer down the side of the mountain to the car.
It was discovered that the male driver was still alive in the automobile, and terrified to even move. Because the car was on its side he was sitting on the driver’s door and looking down through the glass, to a the bottom of the valley, very far below.

Each time he tried to move, his weight shifted the car and it seemed about to fall down the steep cliff.

Later it was determined that he was not paying attention to the road, but was enjoying the scenery, lost control of the car and went over the edge, but was saved when the car jammed between the tree and the cliff.

The rescue of the driver took place many hours after the accident had occurred, and at a time when he thought he would never be found. He yelled for help but could not be seen nor heard. He would probably have died, long before he would have been found.

Recovery of the car was even more difficult and all traffic on the road had to be halted for a number of hours until the job was done.

The man was saved only because a very observant driver saw "a flash of light" off the windshield and realized it was a car. He assumed it was an old accident but spoke to me only because he was curious about the details. I was too busy at the time to get his name, but I did follow up on the report and was happy to hear the driver was saved.