Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Near Death Experience
So USA Today has a story out that states debris on the roadway causes up to 25,000 wrecks every year and kills about 80 per year.
Out of the 36 states that pick up debris on a daily or weekly basis, 87% reported tire treads among the five most common items. Other debris that was noted: garbage dropped by waste haulers, construction materials, and mufflers and exhaust parts.
The source of much of the litter is from trucks, both commercial and private, that are carrying unsecured loads. Even something as routine as a sofa being hauled in the back of a pickup truck can pose a threat.
How about split rims from semi-trucks? Yes, naturally, because my life is never boring, I most indeed do have a story about this as well. Grab your popcorn.
I was working for a courier company, (my second one), and I had to drive around Seattle to various banks and then down to Portland, OR every weekday. Sometimes I had the displeasure of driving a van which held both propane and gasoline. I hated these vans because they were big, bulky, I hated filling them up with propane and the worst part, I had to sit on a phone book to see over the steering wheel. (Oh shut up.) Additionally, I did not like them because the sides of the back part of the van had no windows so I had to hope some poor fool wasn’t sitting in my blindspot. I drive fast anyway so once I got out of the Tacoma area, I planted myself in the left lane and did not remove myself from that lane until I reached Portland.
So, as it was, I was traveling in the “fast” lane one day and we, (meaning me and all the other drivers), had just left Olympia behind and were coming to the portion where three lanes went back down to two. I’m speeding along behind a green car, some sedan, when I noticed something sitting in the road ahead of the green car. Because the van was so big, I was actually seated up higher and could see over the tops of the cars in front of me and it is for that reason only that I saw this object in the middle of the lane.
I had no idea what it was, could be anything, could be a dead animal, whatever, but I decided to slide over to the left of the lane just a bit so that I would not hit it with my tires. This very action saved me.
The car in front of me ran over the object and the next thing I know, I saw this thing slam beneath his car, flip up from the back and come spiraling towards my windshield. In less than a second, it sliced through the glass, shatters and pieces flying everywhere aimed right where my head would have been had I not moved over just a little to the left.
It was a split rim from a tractor-trailer, a semi truck, an 18 wheeler.
I slammed on the brakes in reaction to having some forgeign object hurtling towards me and came to a complete stop in the freeway. I sat there for about 10 seconds in complete shock. Some of the drivers around me had seen this happen and had slammed on their brakes as well and came running up to my vehicle to see if I was okay. I couldn’t tear my eyes off of this round piece of metal.
The thing almost took my head clean off. Do you have any idea how eerie that feels?
I pulled the van over to the other side of the road and traffic picked back up while a police officer spoke to me and told me there wasn’t much anyone could do about road debris; that it wasn’t the green sedan driver’s fault. I wasn’t looking to blame anyone, I still couldn’t believe what the hell had just happened.
Now this police officer did not have the best roadside manner because he then proceeded to tell me a story, “You realize how lucky you are don’t you? Not too long ago we came upon a station wagon that appeared abandoned. When we looked inside, we saw a man dead in the driver’s seat. It took us awhile to figure out that what had happened was that some tools had fallen off the back of the truck in front of him and a screwdriver came through his windsheild and went through his head. We found the bloody screwdriver in the back of the car.”
Er....thanks for that.
Anyway, my company came and picked me up as I was a bit shaken up and also had to go get my eyes washed out and a tetnus shot because of all the flying glass. I kept the split rim. The mechanic at the place where I worked cleaned it up and spray painted it for me, silver and black.
I had that rim on my wall for years to remind me, each and everyday, how lucky I was that I didn’t drive a station wagon and it wasn’t a screwdriver.
If you do lose something on the freeway, the best thing to do is alert the police about it because it’s too dangerous for you to try to retrieve it but it’s also extremely dangerous to just leave it there. I’d rather face a fine than know that something I lost on the roads injured or killed somebody.
