I was on my way to my first job site this morning and barely avoided a possible fatal accident. I was on our bypass loop I-295 and was in the right lane. There was an 18 Wheeler in the left lane since the exit to I-95N exits from the left lane and we were coming up to that interchange. There is an exit about a mile before that is a loop style exit that circles back around. Well there was another 18 wheeler exiting there and was in the turn lane.

Well the Chevy truck decided I was not going fast enough for him so he flew into the turning lane behind the truck that was turning and then swung back into the right through lane barely missing me by about 3 or 4 inches. If he had hit me, I was right beside the trailer tires of the truck on the left of me. He would have clipped my right front and threw me left right into those truck tires. I am in my Cobalt so the truck probably would have ran right over my car. I would have either been critically injured or killed. And to top it off, that sorry POS kept going. If I had been in anything bigger than my car, I would have been hit since it was that close.

 

Things like that really make you think.
That was close. I came even closer.

Winding two lane, late at night, big ditches and trees on both sides.
Sharp right turn ahead posted 35 mph.
Saw headlights coming toward into the turn as I approached.
The driver was doing about 60.
I knew there was no way in hell he was going to make it.
Rather than hit the brakes, I floored it.
The green car blew past me went off road, recovered and sure enough
slingshoted into my lane right where I had been.

He shot across the road and ran into a brick wall I had just passed.
By the time I found a place to turn and go back,
the vehicle was empty, blood everywhere, reeked of booze.

I missed a head-on by inches, or so I thought.
The next day I found green paint on the left rear corner of my bumper, I never even felt it.

For those from around here, it was Saunders Road, that skirts the Big Bethel reservoir.

 

Paul, how long had you been driving side-by-side with the 18 wheeler, not allowing faster traffic to get by? If you don't want to get sideswiped by a big truck then don't drive along side-by-side with big trucks. Speed up or slow down but don't create rolling roadblocks and appoint yourself Mr Law Enforcement to determine how fast the other guy is allowed to drive.

 

I had just came up beside the truck about 20 seconds before this happened and was actually driving about 75-80 in a 65 trying to pass the truck. This area is only a 2 lane each way interstate. This Chevy truck was driving at least 90. There was another car about 8-10 car lengths ahead of me in my lane, so I really did not have much of a choice.

If you want to drive reckless and fast like that then so be it, but I don't drive like that. I try to drive defensive and tried to speed up to get out of the way but I saw this truck had no intentions on stopping and had to slow down a little and that is what saved my life.

 

Holy Chit Raoul.

 

Nice liberal spin. I bet you think it was our fault that 9/11 happened, Iraq is better off with Sadaam in power, and that Bush is the only president that did domestic wiretapping. Go buy a clue, the guy in the Chevy was driving like an *******. If you don't see that either you drive like an ******* or are incapable of placing blame on someone else or a combination of both.

 

You left out Global Warming.

 

Thanks.. I knew I was missing something.

 

 

That sux. Glad you're ok.

 

glad both Paul and Raoul ended up ok.

my little story now. this happened in England.

i was the passenger in my friends car up front with another in the back. It was a mini, driving back early one morning after partying all night. we had a 30 mile drive.
So we are leaving and us 2 passengers fall asleep. soon i awake to find us in the wrong lane driving along in the grass. i wake up the driver and decide to stay awake till we all get home. we turn up the radio and open the windows.
it gets cold, so we close the window and the radio is annoying, so we turn it down.
I woke up the next morning in hospital. i was basically ok. the driver broke his femur and smashed his foot. cut his head and face open and had over 37 stitches in it. the guy in the back was totally ok.
i found out later he fell asleep and drove straight in to an old oak tree. it hit so hard the engine and tranny were ripped out. we were only 3 miles from home.

 

Chit does happen.
1994, Northern B.C.. Riding my Harley. I was coming up behind a tour bus on a looooooooooooooong gradual up hill. I was going to pass as it was gradually slowing down to below 90Kph. I checked my mirrors and saw a small white car coming up fairly quickly with his blinker on to pass. I backpeddaled a bit and let him by. He passed both me and the bus, then I saw him pull in front of the bus. By then it was a bit too late for me to attempt the pass. I saw the canopy of a motorhome approaching from the other direction from over the hill and besides, I wasn't in that big of a hurry. I had slowed down enough that there was about 100 feet between me and the bus. Then, I notice the white car that had just passed us start to slowly cross the centre line. The oncoming motorhome tried to avoid the car, but the car just kept encroaching into the opposing lane. The motorhome had nowhere to go, other than the ditch (and why he didn't go to the ditch is beyond me), and both vehicles collided, head-on. The left side of the motorhome slammed into the car about the centre line of the car, launched itself up and over the hood, cleaned everything off in a straight line from the top of the engine to the bottom of the rear window of the car, including the top half of the driver of the car. The second I saw what was happening, I hammered both brakes and came to a complete stop about 50' behind the bus, which stopped about the same distance from the wreck. The motorhome flipped onto its right hand side and skidded to a stop. The car stopped immediately upon impact. A pickup pulling a trailer loaded with about 6 horses following the motorhome just managed to tap the rear end of the motorhome. I ran to the scene and as I arrived at the motorhome, the older guy opened the driver's escape door and had climbed up onto the side and was preparing to jump down. I just started to holler for him to stay there, and he jumped, and broke his ankle. He was hollering something about his wife in the back in bed, so I ran around the back and she wa just crawling out from under the mattress and out the broken rear window of the motorhome. She was fine. I ran back to the car, took one look and saw the lower half of the driver still in the seat, the top half laying on the road a few feet away. The bus driver approached and wanted to use my sleeping bag to cover the body. I basically told him to get stuffed. I had to sleep in it and he had lots of blankets in the bus. The German tourists were starting to gather and take pictures until I started on a rampage and chased them all away.
It happened that the guys in the pickup and trailer wre EMT's and they took care of the guy with the broken ankle. I got a tractor-trailer driver to radio for police and ambulance, managed traffic control and kept things in order until the RCMP arrived. I asked the bus driver if he was going to give a statement, he said yes and i asked to hear it. It jived with mine. When everything was settled, I asked the officer if I could drive my bike down into the ditch to pass and was told no. I had to backtrack about 10 miles to a farm road to get around the accident scene. I jumped on the scoot and booted it because I knew there were going to be a lot of vehicles on my butt, and I didn't want to be meeting a lot of oncoming traffic on a dusty farm road. I was just about 1/2 way into the detour when I saw the vehicles coming towards me and the vehicles catching up with me. I drove my scoot off the road and up the side of a small incline, turned off the bike, climbed off and sat down to watch the spectacle. There were 2X90 degree turns ahead of me, one to the right then one to the left. I watched in amazement as the first 2 vehicles met at the first 90 degree corner. HEAD-ON!!!. I watched everyone come to a grinding halt again, then jumped back on my scoot and did the side-hill thing past them and off into the sunset, literally.

 

First of all, Paul, I know exactly where you're talking about since I only live about 20 miles north of Jax, and am down there frequently. It is a very dangerous interchange, and Jax drivers aren't known for their courteouness nor their intelligence.

Now here's my story...I was pulling a 21' Bayliner, and had just made a left out of a gas staiton onto a two lane road. About a 1/4 mile up the road, in the direction I was heading, is a sharp blind curve. A Dodge Durange passes me. Of course, this angered me, so I did gave him the All-American finger as he went around. Guess he didn't approve, because as soon as he gets about 5-10 feet in front of me, he slams his breaks. If the trailer didn't have brakes on it, we would have slammed into him at about 35 mph. I tired to signal him to pull over so we could settle this dispute, as the guy with me, about 6'4", 225, ex wrestler, was also a little peeved since it was his boat. I tried, but couldn't catch him with the anchor I was dragging. Hope I meet that SOB again...