True Story
Yesterday Joey was driving south on the 101 freeway out of Scottsdale. He was just passing the connection with the Mesa 202, and drivers coming from the 202 East were merging just to Joey's right.
One such merging vehicle was a large white pickup truck pulling one of those long flatbed trailers. You know the type: flaking, rotten-looking, wooden planks on a steel frame painted white and speckled with rust. No walls or rails or anything, just a long flat bed on two wheels.
This truck was coming from the 202 so it had a lot of sideways momentum coming in from the curve of the merge ramp. Just as the truck was hitting the 101 just ahead of Joey, and beginning to straighten out from it's curving tragectory...
the trailer suddenly unhitched, and followed that sideways momentum previously mentioned.
Now rolling freely at approximately seventy miles per hour, and without the truck to fight that sideways energy it rolled directly into Joey's path, mere feet from his front bumper... and kept rolling across the next lane... and the next... and the next. It rolled all the way into the median, which is wide at this spot and full of gravel.
The trailer harmlessly thumped to a halt on the side of the road. Joey and the rest of traffic continued on, as normal. Not so much as a horn honk or a screeching brake even. There was almost no time to react enough to even think to slam on the brakes. It was there and gone in a flash. Joey's foot had barely popped off the gas and then it was all over. No climax. No crash-boom. Nothing.
Joey proceeded to immediately have a massive panic attack.
Luckily his girlfriend was on speed dial. He called her right away and in between gulping breaths of air told her what had just happened. She patiently talked him down.
In case this doesn't sound terrifying enough, here's a little more detail to clarify.
Joey and three other unsuspecting drivers in the lanes to his left were all side-by-side-by-side across those lanes also going approximately seventy miles per hour. A very large trailer (I'm guessing about ten feet wide by twenty feet long) made of steel and wood rolling directly into any one of their paths and hitting any one of them would have been bad news for all of them... or even if it still didn't hit anybody, but just one guy reacted poorly and swerved for that matter. They would all have been toast. It was poor planning on their part.
I clearly remember learning in high school drivers ed class to always give yourself some maneuvering room to at least one side or the other, just in case of emergency. Neither Joey, nor any of the other drivers were following that advice yesterday, that's for certain.
But instead they all kept their cool and it safely careened right past all of them and safely into a gravel ditch.
Phew.
COMMENTS
Yeah, well I squished a bug and you don't hear me braggin'.
As a result of this near brush with death, Joey has begun referring to himself in the third person. Doug expresses to Joey his hearty congratulations and is glad Joey decided to stick around awhile.
So freezing-and-doing-nothing=keeping your cool?
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