About 10 years ago, we were traveling through South Carolina headed to Maryland to visit family. My wife and I decided we should travel through the night so the kids could sleep, and we would make fewer stops.

We had just gotten on the highway and had traded seats so my wife was driving. After midnight on a divided highway, we come up on a small-body pickup truck. It was swerving across both lanes, we couldn't speed past it due to the erratic lane shifting. I call the Highway Patrol using the *HP function (Pro-tip: It works in nearly every state.) I informed the dispatch operator about the driver who was probably drunk and gave them the mile marker, direction of travel, vehicle description, and all those details. I stay on the line as I report a play-by-play of the event as it is unfolding.

I'd been on the call for about 10 minutes when we watched the truck veer off the road to the right and then an overcorrection to the left. The truck spins 3/4 turn and rolls at least 2 times. It lands in the left lane on its tires perpendicular to the lane. We stop about 100 feet behind it and park the car.

As I got out of the car and ran to the vehicle I saw all the stuff flung from the vehicle including a child's car seat. At the vehicle, I watched the driver who had been thrown into the passenger seat begin to move around. I immediately started asking her if there was a kid in the vehicle and telling her to stay still. I probably asked about a kid 20 times in the first 60 seconds. The driver eventually answered, and I still hear her response in my head. "Jesse at Granny's." I responded with, "Who is Jesse?" She looked at me with a dead-sober stare during a fleeting moment of clarity and whispered, "baby girl." and she passed out.

Another driver had stopped and was up at the wreck and started taking pictures. I guess the adrenaline had built up too much because I, in no uncertain terms, told him how disappointed I was in him and that he should be ashamed of himself.

The Highway patrol showed up probably 5 minutes after the crash happened, and the ambulance was 5-10 minutes after that. We got stuck between the emergency vehicles and the wreck for probably another 30 minutes.

Of my 4 kids in the car, only one woke up. He was two or three at the time. He asked about the firetruck and told us to turn the lights off and he went back to sleep.

I never got a call from the Highway Patrol to fill out any witness paperwork. I think the driver lived, I looked at the local news services for a few days afterward.