2012/09/06
Northbound on the West Virginia Turnpike, I passed a truck that had been hauling bricks on a flatbed.
HAD been hauling bricks.
HAD been a truck.
Apparently it had sideswiped a granite wall. Brick dust all over the highway, intact bricks mixed in like chunks of carrot in a bowl of soup. The trailer was on its side, half its load still strapped in place.
Ahead of it, something that might have been a truck once. I couldn't tell. Behind it, a long trail of clothes, knick-knacks, and scraps of canary-yellow fiberglass that I have to assume had once been a sleeper.
God, I hope nobody was taking a nap in it.
In the movies, eighteen-wheelers are juggernauts. Unstoppable THINGS that crush hapless vacationers like bugs while their drivers grin maniacally. Truth is, they're just big. Armor plate would be that much less weight they could haul. So they're actually flimsier for their weight than a car. And most of that weight is in a lump behind you, still moving when the truck has abruptly stopped. Ready to turn your vehicle into an accordion.
Or, in this case, to scrape the cab off the frame with the side of a mountain.
Maybe they got out all right.
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1 comment:
Ol' Newton sure had it right, didn't he? Objects in motion will continue in motion, unless acted on by an outside force.
And thin steel banding and some webbing holding down the stacks of bricks just... isn't enough outside force if that pallet of heavy stuff keeps going after the rest of the truck suddenly stops.
Force=Mass*Velocity. Talk about applied physics...
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