Hit and runned-over, well almost
Yesterday I packed up, and around 6:30 pm I made my teary-eyed departure from Washington, DC. I will miss Ashley a lot, as well as the rest of the Grant house crew.
Fast-forward two and a half hours… I'm about 10 miles from the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Above me I see a lit-up banner that reads "IN CRISIS? CALL 1-800-273-TALK." I'd noticed this sign before. In fact, you encounter it twice in Delaware when you drive northbound on I-95, four and one mile(s) from the bridge, respectively. I always thought these signs to be odd. For one, unless you have a hands-free device, you can't make cell-phone calls in a car. Secondly, I wonder what kind of crises could be occurring in a car near the Delaware Memorial Bridge that wouldn't instead warrant a call to 911. Perhaps, I mused half-seriously, it was for people who are afraid of bridges.
So I start to head over the bridge and lose interest in the crisis hotline. At around the apex of the bridge, I am in the far right lane, and a tractor-trailer to the left of me starts veering into my lane... until it reaches the point where it is actually scraping against the side of my car. I panic, and shortly thereafter it becomes clear my car is going to lose control. In the split second I had I turned my steering wheel to the right and slam on the breaks, so as to have the side of the bridge save me. Luckily, there were no cars behind me or the trailer, so coming to a complete stop on the bridge was still a safe option. The trailer simply drove off, having almost killed me. The optimist in me believes that he was too high on the amphetamines which he took for his Atlantic-coast shipment to even notice what had happened.
As you can imagine I was a bit startled. After all, the situation involved both bridges and automobile accidents, two things of which people are terrified. I was well familiar with this formula, after having seen a movie involving snakes + planes the previous weekend. After catching my breath, I realized my car seemed capable of driving. I called 911 as I drove down the bridge so that I could get onto some kind of shoulder.
In the end, I didn't catch the tags, or even see what the trailer looked like, and since I don't have full-insurance, it wasn't in my best interest to file an accident report. I drove the rest of the way home, and the only thing that seems to have been damaged was the side of my car, where there are some gray scrapes. I was very lucky.
On an off-topic note, I am working on an entry called "Dynamics vs. Dialectics." It even has flash animations to illustrate the points. How much fun!
0