How could people not see the lady in the median?
Because unconscious, she looked like road debris from the crash, not a person. The first place you check is vehicles, especially if you have a personnel count prior to the additional accident. You start looking elsewhere AFTER you check the vehicles, as vehicles have multiple restraint systems that give a large bias (if used) towards retaining people in the vehicle. Then you start checking areas elsewhere. The first place you start looking for ejections is in the direction of travel/impact then spread out from there if you don't find them.
Between just living in AK and also having been a firefighter there, I've seen some scary winter shit happen. Even had some scary shit happen to us, but mitigated it's effects to simply being a 360 on the roadway already doing 30 in a 65 because of the weather. Also had the pleasure of going "Yay, I get to watch someone die tonight" when a lane was blocked due to a center median flatbed towtruck recovery, I saw it and moved to the right and slowed down, Cherokee driver decided to blow past all of us slowed down and in the right lane at 10 over the speed limit in an ice storm.... locked em up, slid sideways, and hit the rear end of the flatbed broadside with the drivers side of the jeep. Driver survived by pure luck. Her seat headrest and the B/C/D pillars were all severed at the window line. Police that arrived on-scene thought I was the tow truck driver because I had reflective gear on... no, I'm just not a fucking idiot and bought my 3-in-1 5.11 jacket specifically because it was a nice 2 piece jacket that came with a pretty baller reflective vest that I also used for work.
Between our training and always-in-the-rig med equipment, we always stop at traffic scenes given an apparent need for help and the ability to do so safely... but we also have solely 4x vehicles and will actually put our rig off road just so we're in less of a hazard zone... and also tend to add additional warning/scene lighting onto the vehicles as well for the utility and visibility boost.
Stupid drivers in the winter is also why I always ran the Onspot chains on any apparatus I was driving in the winter both code and non-code, period, unless it was already fully chained up. Any help I could get for braking due to people not realizing that a 65,000 lb Big Red Truck with blinky lights on should be yielded to, even when already driving in total paranoia mode, was appreciated. The brilliance of the public at large is astounding when you're in a position to observe it...
:-"
