The guardrail does its job

 

It looked like things had gone terribly wrong for the little car; it crashed.

 

There is was, up against the guardrail at a totally wrong attitude, at the edge of the bridge, waiting to get towed away.  (We don’t know who it was that crashed; this is just a situation I came upon while out for a walk.) 

 

Later, from a different angle, it became clear that as bad as the situation seemed at first look, the crashed car would have had it much worse if the guardrail had not given its all to protect it from a much worse fate.