The scariest non-event of my career (so far)

This afternoon I dropped off a trailer at a rail yard,* the last bit of business before taking the truck to the Atlanta terminal and myself home.

Traffic on I-285** was moderate-to-heavy, and moving well. Since I wasn't going to pick up another load, the dispatcher didn't try to find an empty for me. So this was one of those rare times when I didn't have a 53-foot tail to wag in traffic. This simplifies driving quite a bit. And in a few more miles, I would be getting into a compact car, which would simplify things even more. For some reason, I was cheerful all of a sudden.

I have to remember not to be cheerful while on the job.

About a hundred yards or two ahead of me, a car spun out and blew a tire--or blew a tire and spun out. Hard to tell when you're in a hurry. What I noticed was that he lurched, whirled, and ended up sideways in the lane, not moving. Right in front of me.

Fortunately, even when I am preoccupied with happy thoughts, I'm still paranoid about following distance. Even with the surprise of it, and the uncertainty of which lane he'd end up in, I was still on the brakes in plenty of time. There shouldn't have been any problem stopping.

Except for the fact that I was bobtail. I mentioned once, I believe, that a tractor without a trailer has practically no weight on the rear wheels. I may have even mentioned the picture I saw of one braking too hard and turning a front somersault. It makes me less enthusiastic on the subject of brake pedal pressure, for some reason.

And then there was the fully loaded tractor trailer behind me. Don't want to stop TOO quick.

And the lanes on both sides were full of cars. Cars that were now moving considerably faster than I was. Translation: Changing lanes to dodge wasn't an option.

So there I sat, trying to feel how close I was to losing traction on the back wheels. And how much luck the fellow behind me was having matching me. And watching the fellow in the car watch me (the driver's seat was right in front of my bumper--of course). It was an interesting few seconds. But at length, I came to a stop--a good three feet from the driver's door--and waited for the big fellow behind me to arrive. I wondered idly how hard he'd hit.

Two or three seconds went by, and no bump. So I stopped scrunching and looked in the mirror again. And there he was.

I'd been right--he hadn't had time to stop. So he'd started a lane change instead. Had he seen an opening? Or taken a chance that nobody was going to argue the point? Fine by me, either way--he'd come to a stop about six feet past the back of my truck, slanting across both right lanes of the Interstate. He'd missed me by a good ten inches.

Well, we were both stopped. And we were blocking all the traffic in both those lanes. So we just sat there with our flashers on until the fellow in the car got his head together, his engine started, and his car off onto the shoulder. Then we both went on our way. As the other truck passed me, he grinned and waved and shrugged. I did the same.

And I went on to the terminal. And from there home.

Scary, huh?

Um, not really.

And that scares me.

I came closer to actually hurting someone today than I have the whole time I've been driving these things, I think. But it's not that different from the kind of thing that happens to me pretty much every day. Between drivers who think they can dance with elephants, weather that makes the road invisible and untouchable at the same time, schedules that put me behind a wheel when my brain insists on dreaming, and a hundred other things, those ten seconds may have been one of the more straightforward problems I've had thrown at me from out of nowhere. Both I and (I think) the other driver were as amused as we were relieved.

Just another day on the job.

Now THAT's scary.

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*The reason I was thinking--hypothetically, of course--about the ethical conundrum of the previous entry.

**The Dreaded Perimeter Highway, that loops clear around metropolitan Atlanta. Said to have been built as a last line of defense in case of another Northern invasion--just let them get on it and they'd never figure out where they were. If so, it won't work--I've seen the D. C. Beltway. But it was a good try...