I do my share of commuting and witness driver stupidity everyday. Rarely though does this stupidity put me in a position where I believe, and I mean really believe that I am going to die. It happened this week.

Picture this… 70 MPH down the road, you in the right lane a fuel tanker in the left, 20 feet in front of you. You have just started crossing a shoulder-less bridge on an uphill incline. As you get to the highest point of the bridge, without warning, the fuel tanker locks up all 18 wheels, kicks across both lanes and begins and uncontrolled skid sideways across your lane and his.

You stand on the brakes. Now you are skidding. There is no shoulder. The fuel tanker begins to buck in the air. There is a lot of smoke in your car from the tanker tires. You are skidding faster than the tanker and in 2 seconds you’re going under it. You wonder how life might have been different had you left work 30 seconds earlier. Survival mode.

Plan B begins when you see the bridge and guard rail coming to and end. Foot off the brake, foot hard on the gas, and at the exact moment as you take a hard right off the road and down a grassy hill, the tanker’s tires grip. Like a giant pinball flipper the tanker trailer kicks hard to the right into the lane you just left.

Immediate danger of car vs. fuel tanker avoided. Fact remains, you are traveling at 40 mph, roughly in control, headed down a grassy embankment. At the bottom, a busy exit ramp for the interstate highway you just crossed on the bridge. Rush hour makes the situation a little hairy. You see a gap in the stream of traffic on the exit ramp.

Meanwhile, over your left shoulder you can see the tanker is finally coming to a stop. You expected the tanker to roll, maybe even down the embankment. You actually feel fortunate. As you safely land on the exit ramp below you compliment yourself, nicely done.

You finally ask yourself why in the hell the tanker braked. You look back and you understand immediately. A fantastically ignorant person had stopped on the highway, in the middle of the left lane. Once again, natural selection was prevented by human compassion.

Now at home, I walked in the door and was greeted like a king by the kids, just like every day… except it wasn’t every day.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Traffic Tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.