I was once on a double date, my friend Mark and his wife Sandy were in the front seat, Mark was driving, and I told him, “That guy in the other lane is coming over,” and Mark took his foot off the gas about the time the other car changed lanes and almost hit us.
Everyone was impressed but the truth is, I worked in traffic for most of my adult life and you get an idea of what drivers are going to do before they do it. Or you get hurt.
It’s not fool proof, because fools are getting more foolish by the day, and you can’t trust anything but a concrete barrier when it comes to stupid drivers.
I have seen some strange sh!t.
When a contractor hired someone new for flagging traffic, I would talk to them for a while, get to know them, and try to figure out if they were going to get killed, or get me killed. Flagging traffic does not take a lot of intelligence, but it cannot be done by anyone who isn’t smart enough to be afraid of traffic.
New Guy told me he was nervous, had a bad feeling about the work. It was a side road, not busy, and I told him just keep your eyes open and don’t turn your back on traffic. I was walking back to my truck when I heard the log truck lock his brakes down and the squeal of rubber on the road made my skin crawl.
New Guy ran.
Not just away from the scene, but down the street, to the nearest store, found a pay phone and called his wife to come get him. The skid marks were one hundred and nine feet long.
Had a guy pull a shotgun on a flagger one day and two cars behind him was a deputy, who was not amused. They got the driver for DUI and threatening someone with a gun. That flagger quit, too.
Ronnie and I were sitting on my tailgate on a Friday, eating breakfast and drinking coffee and it was the last day of the project. Ronnie didn’t do traffic control because he ran the tack truck, which sprayed hot tar out at 350 degrees onto the road so the asphalt would stick to it. But the next Monday Ronnie was trying to stop a semi as they unloaded their equipment and the truck hit him.
Someone called me and told me there had been an accident involving an asphalt crew and wanted to know if I was the project manager. I told them no, I had a crew that finished that Friday. They told me who the contractor was and I waited to find out who had been killed. It was Ronnie.
I stopped taking chances in traffic after I retired. All chances. Any chances. I won’t go to my mailbox if traffic is coming. I rarely pass anyone. I avoid Interstate.
I remember the guy that pulled up on a bridge we were building and asked if he could go on through. There was a seventy-foot-wide gap to the other side and a creek in the middle.
Idiots are getting dumber and I am getting slower. That’s why I don’t do traffic anymore.
Your favorite stupid driver story…..go!
Take Care,
Mike
A friend who had built his own wrecker to haul some scrap vehicles and some repairables to rebuild and sell would have people try to merge in between his wrecker and the towed vehicle.
Buzz, that’s out there, man. Truly foolworthy. Astonishing.
I got hit by a telephone pole. Yes, you read that right. I was coming out from a red light heading up hill. This was in Nashville, the road was a 4 lane with a center turn lane. I noticed a car coming at me. She floated across all the lanes hopped the sidewalk and nailed the pole right next to me. I remember watching that pole fly up and come down hitting the road and bouncing into my grill. My little Pontiac Sunbird was still chugging. The funny part was the bird nose on the car had a half moon cave-in where the pole hit it. Totaled my first car.
Erin, attacked by a pole, and not even in Warsaw?
A friend of mine was rear ended on her way from the car dealership with her first car. Totaled in in less than fifteen minutes.
If you don’t do traffic, I guess you will never come visit me. In NE Illinois, we have lots of traffic and lots of poor drivers.
I’ve made some mistakes. I was driving on an Interstate in southwestern Michigan where the speed limit was 65 or 70 mph. I was in the left lane and the car ahead of me made a sudden movement as to avoid something in the road. It was a piece of cardboard, I think, so I swerved to avoid it. There was someone on my right, so I swerved to the left (towards the shoulder).
My front wheel slipped off the pavement and I overcorrected. I ended up plowing through the median. There was some grass but a lot of dirt that became dust as I slid across it. My windows were down and the sunroof was open because it was a nice day.
When I finally stopped, my hood was in the left lane of the opposing part of the Interstate. My car would not start (apparently it stalled and the fuel pumped shut off). Several people just went around me and kept going. One minivan couldn’t move, so they stopped and a couple of them helped me push my car out of the way.
A minute or two later, the cops showed up. One of them asked me if I rolled my car; he was visibly disappointed when I said, “no.”
No one was hurt–but I was a bit shaken. And coughing up dust for days. My car (a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse with a V6) got repaired and I drove it for a few more years.
I have flagged traffic before. During the summers while going to college, I worked for my county highway department with an asphalt crew and would occasionally don the high-visible vest and use a wooden stick with a high-vis flag on it to control traffic. That is fun in a rural county and people liking to drive fast on the country roads.