question
On Route 117, Velma Winter leads a parade of fleeing vehicles in her Datsun truck. All she can think about is the fire and smoke filling the rearview mirror. She’s doing seventy when she hits the Dome, which she has in her panic forgotten completely (just another bird, in other words,this one on the ground). The collision occurs at the same spot where Billy and Wanda Debec,Nora Robichaud, and Elsa Andrews came to grief a week before, shortly after the Dome came down. The engine of Velma’s light truck shoots backward and tears her in half. Her upper body exits through the windshield, trailing intestines like party streamers, and splatters against the Dome like a juicy bug. It is the start of a twelve-vehicle pileup in which many die. The majority are only injured, but they will not suffer long.

Question: Now that “many have died in the twelve-vehicle pileup”, why does the author say “the majority are only injured”? Haven’t many people died in the pileup?

Question

question
On Route 117, Velma Winter leads a parade of fleeing vehicles in her Datsun truck. All she can think about is the fire and smoke filling the rearview mirror. She’s doing seventy when she hits the Dome, which she has in her panic forgotten completely (just another bird, in other words,this one on the ground). The collision occurs at the same spot where Billy and Wanda Debec,Nora Robichaud, and Elsa Andrews came to grief a week before, shortly after the Dome came down. The engine of Velma’s light truck shoots backward and tears her in half. Her upper body exits through the windshield, trailing intestines like party streamers, and splatters against the Dome like a juicy bug. It is the start of a twelve-vehicle pileup in which many die. The majority are only injured, but they will not suffer long.

Question: Now that “many have died in the twelve-vehicle pileup”, why does the author say “the majority are only injured”? Haven’t many people died in the pileup?

Answer

The author means that the dead did not die immediately, they suffered injuries and died rather quickly. 
Possibly he means that the majority had minor injuries. I'm not real sure.

To me this is a tricky one to untangle. Maybe someone else will come along and see it differently.

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