A young Idaho man died in TX this last weekend. He was running down the middle of a lane on a freeway facing traffic at 4AM. A loaded tanker came over a hill and splatted him before the driver could react. No further info is available at this time.

Unless he was doped up, I'd call it suicide.

I would call it one less idiot for the working class to pay to raise.

Might have been on drugs.

Or needed to be!

Darwin. Don't over think crap like this, it won't make coffee any cheaper. Besides, Darwin is always right.

This guy AND the tanker driver didn't have such a good day.

My thoughts are with the tanker driver.

I brushed a Darwin Award seeker with my car at 65mph on the interstate in the early morning hours about 12 years ago. She was in full stride attempting to walk in front of my car, she just did not have the timing down yet. Some poor bastard behind me wasn't so lucky - she hit his windshield right in front of the steering wheel. I was shook up over my near miss most of the day. I can only imagine how long the image of a drug addled freeway wanderer impacting the windshield directly in front of you would stick in your head.

I'm in awe of the dude lighting up the manhole cover DD posted above. His jacket is blasted off. I suppose his and the kids' ears were ringing for a while.

Most likely drugs or lack of drugs ie. Bipolar Disorder. The manic phase prompts those affected to do some pretty bizarre, crazy, and sometimes tragic things. Pretty sad.

Went to a local meeting several years back for health care providers to update them on current trends and information on drug abuse. One point that stood out in my mind was that the brain was pretty resiliant wrt the effects (at least short term) of commonly abused drugs like heroin, narcotics, marijuana, and even alcohol. If you can get over the dependence/addiction issues then you brain will not suffer any long term effects. The same was NOT true of cocaine, crack, and meth. Short term exposure does in fact seem to have LONG TERM implications for the brain. Imaging studies in people exposed to these drugs demonstrated changes very similar to those changes seen in elderly patients with severe Parkinson's disease which did not reverse itself even after quitting the habit.

Pretty ominous for the future.

I had that happen to me one time except I managed to miss him. It was on the North side of Kansas City about 1:00 am in a light rain. We were coming back from a pheasant hunting trip to South Dakota. It scared the hell out of me for a little bit and then I got mad. I kinda wish that I had run him over so somebody else did not have to put up with that BS. miles

Knew a guy who's wife had a homeless man step out in front of
her several years ago. She was in therapy for awhile after it
happened.

Some classmates of mine would lay down on the lane stripes on the interstate at night for a rush.....it was a game to them. I am not sure if the kid won or lost, but he was run over and lost the ability to walk or poop without a bag one night. They didn't play anymore.

Doesn't matter either way...it is not like they are rare, they still make them.

Years ago, a friend and fellow truck driver (at the time) smacked a guy square on with a cab over Freightliner at highway speed. He told me that the guy walked out in front of him and faced the truck with his head down. His boss brought another tractor up and my friend finished the trip. My friend is gone now, too. May God rest your soul, Lorne, you were a good friend and a good man.

Back in college, I was heading south to Virginia from college up in Boston...I was in PA where I 81 had a high speed left lane ramp that merged onto I 83 south bound on the left lane also..

I was night, and had been snowing heavily, but had turned to rain...I was doing the ramp speed of 55 mph, and at the last moment I saw some sort of blurred movement thru the wipers, and the headlights of other vehicles... I missed a pedistrian by inches, who was walking with a back pack in the road on a high speed merging ramp in the dark and in the rain...

I missed him by inches and the grace of God... the semi ( a cab over) was not so lucky.. in my rear view mirror I saw him hit the guy dead on and the driver never ever saw him... I managed to get my vehicle safely off the road once merged onto I 83, and with a blinking flash light ran back up the ramp, but off the pavement and on the other side of the guard rail.

The truck driver had stopped, and when I ran up to him, he was in a state of shock, or at least setting in... he looked at me and then pointed to the blood and the dent by his headlight and asked what was that... I told him he had hit a guy walking on the ramp... he looked at me for a moment and then broke down crying hysterically... I flagged down the next truck that was going by slowly since the other truck had its flashers on...

I told him what had happened and to get ahold of the State Police on his CB...

I went up and found the guy who had been hit... he was out of it, but still breathing...he had been knocked over the guard rail and into the snow...

the state police had gotten there at the same time from one direction as did an ambulance from the other direction.. traffic was blocked by the State Police and the local cops...

The paramedics asked me to help lift the guy over the guard rail to get him on the gurney.. we held traction on him, rolled him over and got his back pack off...

They did not have a spine board.... so we got a batch of other guys and did a cross arm lift, like several of us had learned in Boy Scouts.... when we lifted him, he was like a bag of jello in a sock...he must have broken every bone in his body...

When I got back from my trip, I had a call from an insurance adjuster and asked what I had seen.. he told me the guy died of his injuries in the hospital a few hours after getting there...

he never regain consciousness....

his family had asked if they could talk to me about it, so I agreed and actually went to his folks home in New Hampshire and spent an afternoon with them...

it was really sad, he was 23 yrs old and was hitchhiking to Fla, without his parents approval.

it of course hit his family hard...

this is one of the two guys that made me make the decision to go into the medical corp when I went into the military several years later...