Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Saw a bad accident..

Coming back from the range and got on I-20. Was crossing the bridge into Monroe when I saw a mattress blow out of the back of a pick up and hit a fella riding a motorcycle.

If you are riding be fargin' careful.

JM

No kidding! And secure your load!

Kinda shakes you up, when you realize that you've witnessed someones last moments on earth.

Makes you sick...

It certainly took my mind off of the schitty groups I shot.

That guy died because someone didn't use $1 worth of string.

I beautiful young lady was driving to school when the pickup truck in front of her lost a full sheet of composition board. It went through the windshield of her car and shattered her face. Se lived but lost both eyes and is no longer nice to look at. She is a surviver and has an amazing attitude. Her name is Maria. I saw a video of her where she was excited about a surgery that might restore some of her taste.

We now have Maria's Law here in Washington. Any unsecured load can draw a fine, think it starts around $500. For commercial drivers it is triple that. If your unsecured load causes an accident or any injury it will cost you thousands. It is a law I have no problem with.

Years ago I was driving a Mazda on the freeway in Dallas, and it was a windy day. About 50 yards in front of me a pickup had a new sofa in a box, on top of a new mattress in its plastic wrap. A big wind gust blew the sofa out of the bed, onto the freeway, and I swerved to miss it, only to have it drift over into the lane I picked. I center punched the box but kept things in control. Luckily no cars tangled, even though there was a fair amount of traffic. The pickup, my car, and the sofa all wound up against the inner wall, and I help him load it back in his truck. Amazingly, no damage to the front of the car. I am sure the sofa frame was busted to hell inside the box, and I hope his wife reamed him when he got home with the busted sofa.

The only injury was ringing in my right ear, from the wife screaming...

and yes, tie down the ****ing cargo. I drove a deer blind about 300 miles last fall in the back of my truck, driving up to 80 mph on I-10, and I had it tied down with doubled 3" straps. No problems.

When I was driving daily into Chicago on the Kennedy I used to see all kinds of things departing cars and trucks. I watched a trailer use a wheel one day and the thing bounced over my car, missed several others, and went into the oncoming side of the express lanes and took out an O'Hare courier van. They guy lived, but I found out on the news that night it took an arm.
If you drive enough miles you'll see all kinds of ugly stuff.

Was once in a line of traffic when a truck ahead shed a rear tire...The guy directly behind the truck was driving a little open top MG Midget, and the shredded tyre went *over* the guys head..I had to swerve and end up pulled up behind the MG...The drive got out and was shaking and deathly white to point I thought he was going to have a heart attack...

The truck driver carried on and didn't even stop to see if anyone was hurt..

Back in the 70s my dad used to see a guy riding a bicycle
almost every evening on his way home from work. The guy
was found dead one evening after he failed to come home
a few days later an elderly woman with poor eye sight
confessed to hitting him by accident but she wasnt sure
what it was that she hit until she saw the news a day
later.

a Midget would not do so well if a truck tire hit it, even if it was just tread. I always felt very vulnerable in that TR6 we had.

Back in 1985, I bought a Honda ATV. We loaded it in the back of my buddy's pick up. He borrowed a big flat bed trailer and put 2 pre fabed deer blinds on the trailer and tied down his 3 wheeler on top. I added a couple extra ratchet straps t ensure the load didn't shift.
About 150 miles into our trip to camp his pick up gave a funny shake. We looked at each other and then the trailer. Suddenly the pick up shook again and the trailer broke loose! It went across the next lane of NB I75 and hit the guard rail, rode the rail for 30 feet and then flipped over it.
Thank God no one was hit or injured.

Root cause:
My friend had taken off the bumper to refinish it prior to our trip to camp. We he put the ball back on the bumper, he used a cresent wrench to tighten it aqnd it worked its way loose!

Any ball I have ever mounted has been with a pipe wrench with an additional 4' pipe for additional leverage. Once on, they never come off!

JD338

Trailers...

Have seen the aftermath. One woman cut in half when a trailer went through a drivers door, the other woman was decapitated when a trailer went through a windshield.

Yet those towing are hellbent on driving 80mph.

I had a whole Ford Excursion full of soul brothers and sisters come at me sliding on its roof. It had evidently take a lane change too fast and had flipped over. The occupants were hanging from their seat belts. Those were the widest eyes I have ever seen. I was stopped in traffic but was able to move forward about two feet so that it missed me by about one foot and smashed into the car behind me. It flipped back upright on impact, smashed into two more cars, and finally skidded to a stop. It happened so quickly that I was quite lucky to be able to avoid being hit.

I am all too frequently reminded how quickly life altering or life ending events can occur for very trivial reasons to people who have done nothing wrong.


edit: I weld all my trailer balls to a receiver insert so they can never come loose.

Sign leaving a concrete batch plant in Belgrade MT reads.


Be Careful
You Are Now Entering
The Most Dangerous
Place On Earth

Couple months ago I was drving in the city and a truck ahead of me ran over a manhole cover, causing it to jump about 4 feet into the air. Somehow it came down between lanes without rolling into traffic and I don't think anyone hit it, but I can imagine what would happen if you hit an airborne manhole cover. Never saw that happen before,I'm wondering how that occured.

Question: where was the motorcyclist in relation to the vehicle with the mattress?

Many times on the bike I've seen mattresses, wood, Christmas trees, you name it, on top of vehicles or in pickup beds.. You can bet your sweet bippy I'm paying attention to those loads and I either stay well back or move over a lane and pass as quickly as possible/feasible.. I remember one time ('70s, I think) when some small car with a surfboard on the roof was just about to the bottom of the Hudson hill going west on I94 when that board let loose.. Thank God no other car was close enough to get hit with that airborne missle...

The day I picked up my new pickup, back in 2007, I was heading out to a friend's house, and danged if there wasn't a ladder lying in my lane as I was heading down the road. I was able to switch lanes despite the heavy traffic at the time, but I could see me ripping the undercarriage out from underneath the brandy-new truck right then and there.

We had a bunch of snow and ice in Central Oklahoma this winter, and the road crews put down a bunch of sand and very small gravel to aid motorists in getting traction. All of the snow and ice is gone now, but all of that sand and very small gravel is still on the roadway, especially at intersections and curves. I ride motorcycles a lot, and it's very dangerous at these intersections and curves because of that stuff on the road. When turning, or taking those curves, you have to be very aware of that stuff on the road. And you have to be very careful because your bike will slide out from under you because of that stuff. Last week a well known man in the area lost his life because he was taking one of those curves on his motorcycle, and his bike slid out from under him because of that stuff on the road. Although he was wearing a helmet, he was killed when his head struck the pavement.

"Couple months ago I was drving in the city and a truck ahead of me ran over a manhole cover, causing it to jump about 4 feet into the air."

It sounds like they probably repaved the road and raised the manhole lids using plastic rings (spacers). When roads are repaved the manhole lids usually have to be raised. Around here the phone company usually coordinates with the paving contractor and raises the lids to the level of the new ashpalt before they repave. I was doing some contract telephone engineering in Florida a couple of years ago when they repaved a major street. In Florida the maintenance people located and uncovered the lids after they were paved over leaving some nasty bumps. It was up to the engineering dept. to issue a job for construction and to order the manhole rings of the proper thickness to raise the lids up to the new asphalt level. I issued a job and ordered manhole rings of the correct diameter and thickness. After they were installed a telephone installer witnessed a truck run over one of these lids and the lid bouncing up and off the manhole leaving an open hole in the street. He ran out in traffic and put the lid back in place before someone ran into the hole. When I questioned the contractor that placed the manhole rings he said the rings were made out of plastic. Some bean counter with the phone company had decided that they could save a lot of money by using plastic manhole rings and that's all they stocked. They had to replace all 5 plastic rings with steel rings custom made by a local foundry. They didn't save any money. I found out later that Florida's DOT had tried the plastic rings and had the same problem.

One thing riding motorcycles trains you in is being a lot more aware of potential road hazards.