> With morning comes hindsight. Was it already too late for the second victim when I found her? (See the link below -- it is her, and she was apparently the driver). Should I have attempted CPR? The thought didn't even anter my mind at the time, and I'm not going to beat myself up over it, but if this ever happens again, I want to be more ready.
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> I probably also should have spent more time checking over the survivor -- trying to figure out the nature and extent of his wounds. Again, though, I'm not so sure that anything other than holding him still would have had much value. I didn't even notice any tears in his clothing. I probably should have grabbed my jacket to put over him, or something, though.

You did exactly the right thing according to what I've been taught. If there are two victims, one who appears to be dead and the other badly injured, you MUST deal with the badly injured victim as your priority. If there had been another person with you, and one of you knew CPR, then maybe one person could have attended to each victim. But even then, I suspect a trained first aider would have examined the person under the wheel, verified that the person was dead, and assisted you with the other guy. (Knowing the basic procedures for how to assess an accident scene/victim is possibly the most valuable knowledge you can gain from a first aid course. The rest is largely common sense, and you did just fine with that.)

It's natural to keep thinking about what you could have done differently, but I can set your mind at ease on one particular point. CPR would almost certainly not have been any use in saving the girl, and may have had the adverse effect of making you concentrate on someone who was already beyond your help, while the guy in the car flailed around alone and perhaps died too. Contrary to what non-medical people believe (and what is taught in most beginner's first aid classes), CPR will save a person in a TINY percentage of cases, even in totally optimal conditions and performed by a professional. We were taught in the medic course in Coastguard that a person you are performing CPR on is, to all intents and purposes, already dead. The fact that CPR *does* save a life in some cases is a minor miracle, the reason why it is taught, and why everybody should know it. But in this case, I'm as certain as I can be from just hearing about a situation, that it wouldn't have been either possible or helpful.

You did exactly the right things. If you don't have any first aid training, you made a whole lot of correct guesses, not to mention keeping your head, which is by far the hardest part.

The other important thing I learned from Coastguard was that going completely to pieces AFTERWARDS, when it doesn't matter anymore, is pretty much the ideal reaction. It makes you feel kind of stupid to get all shaky and distressed at random a week later, instead of when it's happening, but consider yourself (and Dwayne) very lucky that you have that sort of response.