Close Encounters of the Vehicular Kind

[zandperl]

In a year and a half of my super long commute, I am now up to my third harrowing experience driving - first was the blizzard 13 Dec 2007, second was my flat tire 18 Nov 2008 (which I apparently never blogged), and this third one was a truck losing a wheel right after I drove past. I did see the aftermath of a dump truck that lost a wheel over the

Comments

[spazzy444]

That is awesome of you to post that, I've called 911 only once in my life and that was because there were 2 horses galloping loose on a country road. Calling them actually scared me more because I didn't know what to expect or if I was making an unnecessary call. It is very different on cell phones than land lines as well, or so I've heard.

In the end I feel like I did the right thing, because that was a dangerous situation for all involved... (I saw them ahead but I was lucky because they were at the bottom of a slope.)

[zandperl]

I've never made a 911 call from a land line, so if it's different I don't know it. I don't actually have a land phone at home now anyway. :-P I also have never been actually involved in an emergency requiring a 911 call, I don't know if I would be able to be calm like that while calling if I were involved, though I suspect that having called before would help me to stay calm. Another time I made T$ call in a broken down car (edit: that we saw on the side of the road) while I was driving and he was passenger. He said "do we really need to call it in?" I replied "if I were driving by myself I would make the call while driving. Since I'm driving and you're not, you do phone duty for me, and I want to call 911. So yes, get your phone or mine and call 911." IMO it's a civic duty. I want people to call if something happens to me, so I call if something happens to other people

[marquiswildbill]

Seeing a wheel come off a moving car is quite scary.
Back when I was driving my Fucking Old Rebuilt Dodge I merged onto 95 right behind a car that was clearly having serious problems. It had smoke pouring out of the back and I instinctively pulled to the left to get away from it. I heard a clunk like a rock or piece of metal hitting my car, which I later discovered was from something hitting my driverside rear view mirror. A tiny bit to the right and it would have gone through the windshield. That scared the crap out of me. So I can totally understand that you would be shaky from seeing the van's wheel come off.

[zandperl]

Yeah, unfortunately the shakiness meant I didn't work last night and went to bed late, and I needed to work a LOT yesterday night, so now I'm exhausted and need to make up all the work I didn't do last night. :(