Above: The portion of Route 28 where a head-on collision occurred on Feb. 18, 2015. Image via Google Street View.
Two cars slammed into each other almost head-on in the Delaware County town of Andes on Wednesday, Feb. 18. Both drivers were injured, and one woman had to be extracted from her vehicle with the jaws of life, said Dale Tait, the Andes Fire Chief.
The collision was a "driver-to-driver almost head-on" crash that jammed the door of the woman's car completely closed, Tait said. Her vehicle appeared to have spun around on impact, ending up crossways on the road, blocking traffic.
A third car that happened on the scene was forced to drive into a snowbank to avoid colliding with the other two, Tait said. There was no damage to that third vehicle or its driver.
Both drivers were taken to various hospitals with injuries, and the woman who was extricated was eventually airlifted to a regional hospital, Tait said. The male driver of the other car appeared to have minor injuries.
The crash occurred on a curvy portion of Route 28 in front of a barn located at 34616 Route 28, on roads that were dry, Tait said. The crash happened in the morning -- the Andes Fire Department was called to the scene at 8:50 a.m.
At that time, the sun on that portion of the roadway can be glaring.
"It's always bad in that whole section when the sun's bad," Tait said.
Route 28 was shut down from around 9 a.m. to about 10:30 a.m., Tait said, while first responders worked in 10-degree temperatures to extract the woman from her car. A Trailways bus and a tractor trailer were idled in the area while the road was closed.
"They didn’t give us too much guff," Tait said. "They were happy enough to avoid everything."
According to a report in the Daily Star, the female victim was a 55-year-old woman from the hamlet of Denver in Delaware County. She reportedly sustained serious injuries, including a broken leg, and was flown by helicopter to Albany Medical Center. The other driver was a 21-year-old man from Binghamton who may have caused the crash, the newspaper reported:
The 7:45 a.m. crash happened when the male driver in the east-bound lane of Route 28 failed to keep right and his vehicle crossed over into the other lane and collided head-on with the female-driver’s vehicle, troopers said.
Tait said that the woman who was a nurse who was commuting to her job in Delhi, and the man was a Pepsi salesman from Binghamton. Their names have not yet been released.
A State Police spokesman could not be immediately reached for this story.
Update 2/24/15:
The names of the people involved in the crash have been released. The woman driving the black car was 55-year-old Christine Bouton of the Delaware County hamlet of Denver. Bouton was transported by helicopter to Albany Medical Center for fractured left femur, a fractured left arm and a fractured right foot, according to State Police spokesman Nathan Riegal.
Twenty-one-year-old Joshua Kilts of Binghamton was the driver of the other vehicle. Riegel said that Kilts drifted out of his lane and struck Bouton, who was driving in the opposite direction. Kilts was transported to the hospital for complaints of pain in his neck, head and lower arm.
There is no update on the status of either Bouton or Kilts, Riegel said, but it appears that neither one sustained life-threatening injuries.
