possom813
Member
Here recently I have become much more aware of my surroundings and ways to stay safe. For example, we're redoing the landscaping on the house to include some very thorny plants under the windows and just simple things like that. Most of this new awareness has been because of threads and links posted here on THR.
Anyway, let's say a situation like this happened, and the question at hand.
I work 12 hour shifts and due to the distance I drive, I'm usually up for around 18-20 hours a day when I'm on shift. One morning I get off work after being up for around 18 hours and I am tired. No other excuse for what happens, other than being dead tired.
I hit the highway on the way home, 2 lanes north, 2 lanes south. I am southbound. There is a white work truck directly behind me. I am behind a large garbage truck. The white truck changed lanes into the left lane, and I came over in front of him. I never see the silver minivan that was next to and behind me.
He honked and when I heard the horn I saw that I wasn't anymore than 2 feet from hitting the van. So I floored it, roughly 350 horsepower in the truck and plenty of power to get out of the way. I got clear of what could have been a bad day. I was a good 1/4 of a mile in front of the van before I finally slowed down.
I glanced in the rearview and here comes the van at 90mph and got up next to me. It was an older gentleman, probably late 60's with what I would assume was his wife in the passenger seat. He did the waving and pointing his finger at me and saying something, not that I could have read his lips at 70mph, but God Bless him, he tried.
There aren't many hand signals to apologize for almost causing an accident, so I tried sign language for I didn't see you. I guess it didn't work. He made a few more choice gestures, and then he reached towards his pocket. I believe this is the point where the new ideals came into play. Any other time I would have dismissed this small gesture. But I don't know what came over me, but his left hand was reaching up trying to unbutton the pocket, his right hand on the steering wheel and he was completely focused on me, so not wanting to find out what was coming out the pocket I swerved my truck at him to distract whatever it was he wanted so badly. This forced him to put both hands back on the wheel and I gassed it again to get ahead of him.
Once ahead of him, I stayed there and called the police. I let them know the situation and that something needed to happen before someone got hurt. They basically told me to go someplace public and wait for the police to show up. So we're 10 miles from nowhere and he's 2 feet off of my bumper and it appeared he was writing down my license plate number, so I "brake check" to back him off a little and took off again. It doesn't bother me if he wrote down the plate number, but being that close to me made me very uncomfortable. He stayed behind me but backed off to about 100 foot or so.
We came into a small town with 2 gas stations so I pulled into one of those and got 10/22 in the front seat with me. I'm not licensed for concealed carry so I usually only have a small caliber rifle in the truck. The van slowed down to turn in which would have either been good or bad. I would have liked to apologize to the guy, because I didn't see him, but I didn't know if his thoughts were the same. But as he slowed down, it appeared the lady and two other passengers, that I couldn't see previously because of tinted windows, were yelling at him to go. He got off the shoulder and back into the lane and drove on. It was over, although I did wonder if the Sheriff's Dept. would show up today and question me about it.
Anyways, would you have done anything different?
-John
Anyway, let's say a situation like this happened, and the question at hand.
I work 12 hour shifts and due to the distance I drive, I'm usually up for around 18-20 hours a day when I'm on shift. One morning I get off work after being up for around 18 hours and I am tired. No other excuse for what happens, other than being dead tired.
I hit the highway on the way home, 2 lanes north, 2 lanes south. I am southbound. There is a white work truck directly behind me. I am behind a large garbage truck. The white truck changed lanes into the left lane, and I came over in front of him. I never see the silver minivan that was next to and behind me.
He honked and when I heard the horn I saw that I wasn't anymore than 2 feet from hitting the van. So I floored it, roughly 350 horsepower in the truck and plenty of power to get out of the way. I got clear of what could have been a bad day. I was a good 1/4 of a mile in front of the van before I finally slowed down.
I glanced in the rearview and here comes the van at 90mph and got up next to me. It was an older gentleman, probably late 60's with what I would assume was his wife in the passenger seat. He did the waving and pointing his finger at me and saying something, not that I could have read his lips at 70mph, but God Bless him, he tried.
There aren't many hand signals to apologize for almost causing an accident, so I tried sign language for I didn't see you. I guess it didn't work. He made a few more choice gestures, and then he reached towards his pocket. I believe this is the point where the new ideals came into play. Any other time I would have dismissed this small gesture. But I don't know what came over me, but his left hand was reaching up trying to unbutton the pocket, his right hand on the steering wheel and he was completely focused on me, so not wanting to find out what was coming out the pocket I swerved my truck at him to distract whatever it was he wanted so badly. This forced him to put both hands back on the wheel and I gassed it again to get ahead of him.
Once ahead of him, I stayed there and called the police. I let them know the situation and that something needed to happen before someone got hurt. They basically told me to go someplace public and wait for the police to show up. So we're 10 miles from nowhere and he's 2 feet off of my bumper and it appeared he was writing down my license plate number, so I "brake check" to back him off a little and took off again. It doesn't bother me if he wrote down the plate number, but being that close to me made me very uncomfortable. He stayed behind me but backed off to about 100 foot or so.
We came into a small town with 2 gas stations so I pulled into one of those and got 10/22 in the front seat with me. I'm not licensed for concealed carry so I usually only have a small caliber rifle in the truck. The van slowed down to turn in which would have either been good or bad. I would have liked to apologize to the guy, because I didn't see him, but I didn't know if his thoughts were the same. But as he slowed down, it appeared the lady and two other passengers, that I couldn't see previously because of tinted windows, were yelling at him to go. He got off the shoulder and back into the lane and drove on. It was over, although I did wonder if the Sheriff's Dept. would show up today and question me about it.
Anyways, would you have done anything different?
-John
but at least thake heart in the fact that that woman is probably still giving that 60 yr old hell for provocking that pickup truck on the road one night