The Joys of Driving

Once upon a time I really enjoyed driving. But that was before I did it for a living... The two or three months I spent driving a delivery truck in the summer of 1972 took most of the joy out of it (and I never quite got it back).

It wasn't just because the truck was dog slow and didn't have turn signals... It was the effort required to keep a schedule while negotiating heavy traffic 6 or 7 hours a day - having to constantly adjust and readjust - trying to find the quickest route from point A to point B - the same thing day after day. It really wore me down... And it seemed like hardly a day went by that I didn't encounter an accident somewhere along my route. (Some of them fairly horrific).

BTW: I was only involved in one "incident" (an extremely minor one). Some "bubba" in a pickup truck got so engrossed in talking to his buddy (Beer? Football? Guns?) that he drifted into my lane during a turn and clipped the back corner of my truck. (There was a "quarter sized" dent in his hood - no damage to my vehicle)... I had been watching him in my mirror the whole time and he never once looked at the road. I tried to avoid it but just couldn't get over any further... I didn't stop right away because I honestly wasn't sure there had been any contact (I didn't feel a thing) and I was behind schedule. But then he flagged me down and jumped out screaming that I had run into him... When he threatened to call the police I calmly pointed out that the paint from his hood was clearly visible on the back of my truck, which meant he would almost certainly be cited for reckless driving... That took the wind out of his sails and (after saying a few more choice words) he left...

Aside: For the past 40 years I've been claiming that I've never been in a moving accident in a 4 wheel vehicle... For some reason this incident never crossed my mind. I guess I just didn't consider it to be an accident... Of course, if you really want to get technical (which I always do) the truck did have six wheels. So there! :-)

But that's not really the point of this post. This is:
Up to that point in my life I had always believed that there was no such thing as an unavoidable car accident. In other words, a truly vigilant motorist could anticipate and avoid anything that happened... But that summer I had a couple of close calls that changed my mind.

First - early one afternoon I was heading southbound on Central Expressway approaching Mockingbird Lane when a white Dodge van somehow flipped over the guardrail on the overpass and landed on the expressway in front of me. I was far enough back that I had time to brake, but if I had gotten there a few seconds earlier the van would have landed on my truck and I would have never seen it coming... Yeah - it's pretty difficult to avoid vehicles falling from the sky...

Second - I was eastbound on the LBJ Freeway approaching Central Expressway when a Buick went straight across the freeway in front of me (going about 40 MPH)  and slammed into the center divider. (The driver appeared to be unconscious the whole time)... Totally freaked me out! ... I never saw it coming, and if I'd been there a second sooner I would have hit him...
You know - I pay pretty close attention to everything going on around me when driving. And whenever I'm near an intersection I do my best to expect the unexpected. But a vehicle crossing the freeway at a right angle in between interchanges just isn't something that shows up on my "radar"... 
BTW - That one really had me puzzled... I figure the driver must have passed out on a side street and accelerated across the grass divider onto the freeway... Yeah - sometimes sh*t just happens...

Of course, there were other incidents that were not "close calls" but still stuck in my memory:

Like the accident that ended up blocking all 8 lanes of the LBJ Freeway (4 in each direction.)... I didn't see it happen (just got stuck in the backup) but as near as I can figure here's how it it unfolded:
A semi tractor was heading westbound pulling a long trailer full of gravel when its front axle fell off. (No idea how that happened - the truck looked brand new... Maybe a manufacturing defect?) ... Anyway, the trailer hit the center divider and tossed its entire load across the eastbound lanes, then flipped back over and came to a rest blocking the westbound lanes... The entire freeway was shut down all afternoon... Definitely one of the strangest accidents I've seen :-)

 Finally - I usually don't laugh when I witness an accident (especially when someone gets injured) but this was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen:
There was a woman in a blue Pinto stopped a couple of cars ahead of me in the left turn lane.  The light turned green and a semi started turning left from the opposite direction... Now, vehicles make simultaneous opposing left turns all the time - they simply pass without incident. But in mid-turn the woman in the Pinto somehow managed to run smack dab into one of the truck tires. (I mean, how could she not see it?? It was right in front of her!)
I really didn't intend to laugh, but the Pinto bounced off the truck tire like a tennis ball off a wall. It was a "Funniest Home Video" kind of thing... Then I realized that the driver's head had hit the windshield...

Aside: One of the reasons there were so many serious injuries back then is that very few people wore seat belts (something like 1 in 5). Of course, there were still a lot of cars around that weren't equipped with them (like my '63 Fairlane - they weren't required equipment at the national level until 1966 when the federal vehicle safety act took effect), but the main issue was that most people felt like belts were too "confining" (as if a ending up in a wheelchair isn't confining)... Personally, I always wore a seat belt (when available - it seemed dumb not to) but I have to admit that I only wore the shoulder belt in my '66 Charger when I was planning on driving "stupid fast". Yeah - those early shoulder belts buckled separately from the seat belt and they weren't retractable. Once you fastened them you could hardly move - pretty much sucked rocks... But I digress...

Yeah - I learned a heck of a lot about staying out of trouble in traffic driving that truck. When you have so little maneuverability you have no choice but to focus on awareness and avoidance - learning to sense when somebody is about to do something stupid...

But the main lesson learned was that at the end of the day there is just no replacement for dumb luck.