I think that exact situation would be my worst nightmare! I can’t imagine a more helpless feeling than dangling from a chain. The worst part of it all would be having my loved one sitting next to me and me being unable to do anything to help them.
I’ve often thought about the father and son that died when their truck went over on the bridge that crossed the dam. I spend a fair amount of time on logging roads, fire trails and other miscellaneous narrow dangerous roads without guardrails. The drop on those roads can be 50’ or a 1,000 feet straight down. A couple of times I had my wife get out and walk alongside the truck while I carefully descended, with my door cracked just in case I needed to bail.
I suppose the pucker factor is increased because of my mountain adventure when I was 16. I’d just got my new (to me) F150 and my buddies and I decided to go up in the mountains shooting. I came around a corner near the top of the mountain when I met up with a fully loaded Mac logging truck. I gunned it and aimed for the mountain since the other edge was a 100+ foot drop. The Mac hit me right behind the drivers door and pushed me towards the side of the road opposite the drop off. We were extremely lucky that it worked out the way it did or else my legacy would’ve been that I accidentally killed my best friends as well as myself.
Last year I swapped out the old safety chains on my boat trailer for a heavier set with new bolts and hardware. It’s cheap insurance and gives me a little piece of mind.
Thank God those people were saved by their safety chains......was this the same bridge that claimed the lives of the father and son?
