When I got to work this morning and thought about my commute, I had the thought, “Yeah, that could have resulted in a fatality.”<\/p>\n
The situation…<\/p>\n
When I left home this morning, the sky was overcast and the air was raw, but there was no precipitation. I stopped at Royal Farms to get some gas, and then got on 83 at Leader Heights Road, as I always do. Still no precipitation.<\/p>\n
I was following behind someone in a Toyota pick-up truck with a covered bed. Light, wispy flurries began as I crossed Lake Redman, and the Toyota was holding to the speed limit, which through that stretch of road is 55. Many people take it much faster, but I don’t. As I mentioned the other day, driving in Virginia instilled the “stay within 5 miles of the speed limit” lesson in me.<\/p>\n
Traffic climbed the hill to the Loganville exit. I didn’t really notice that the Toyota had dropped down to about 50. I had an 18-wheeler right on my tail, and we were being passed by traffic that took that stretch of road at 65-80 miles an hour.<\/p>\n
Coming down the hill, right before the speed limit increases to 65, there was a tractor trailer truck pulled off the highway, just barely across the white line, with reflectors out. The Toyota in front of me hit its brakes to slow down even more.<\/p>\n
This is a stretch of highway that goes down a hill, around a curve, and then back up the hill. It’s not uncommon for vehicles to go through the guard rail and into the trees in the ravine at the curve.<\/p>\n
Now, I had no idea what was behind me except for the 18-wheeler, and I processed that I really had nowhere to go. Thankfully, the 18-wheeler behind me had someplace to go, and that was into the passing lane coming down the hill. He shot past me, and on the hill back up I passed the Toyota, now going far<\/i> below the speed limit of 65 and the 18-wheeler that had been on my tail.<\/p>\n
If there hadn’t been anywhere for the 18-wheeler to go, someone was likely to end up smashed, and someone was likely to end up in the tree branches or the ravine below.<\/p>\n
I thought of none of this at the time. It’s only in retrospect that I realized, “Yes, that could have ended very badly indeed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I got to work this morning and thought about my commute, I had the thought, “Yeah, that could have resulted in a fatality.” The situation… When I left home this morning, the sky was overcast and the air was raw, but there was no precipitation. I stopped at Royal Farms to get some gas,Continue reading “A Harrowing Moment on the Highway”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[3921],"class_list":["post-31194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-pennsylvania","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}