The Other Side of the Road
On July 1st 2007 at about 7:30 p.m., a fatal accident occurred on the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York State.
According to the news reports, a tractor-trailer traveling southbound was rear-ended by another vehicle causing it to lose control. It first veered right, colliding with a Ford Explorer pushing the Explorer into the right guard rail, then veered left across two lanes, smashing through the concrete barrier which serves as a center median on that bridge, and while rolling over, collided with an oncoming Toyota, and caught fire. The driver of the tractor-trailer perished in the crash, apparently because the rig caught fire and he couldn’t get out.
The news of this tragic event caused me to pause and “Driverthink” for more than a few passing moments. I know that bridge. I drive that bridge. In fact I had been on it not more than seven hours earlier. Would I have seen the trouble coming? Would I have been able to avoid it? Would I have reacted as quickly and as skillfully as the drivers involved apparently did?
There had to be some pretty slick driving that night. How was that Explorer driver able to recover after being smashed into the guardrail? There’s a whole lotta’ water on the other side of that rail. Was it skill or just pure luck that he survived?
How skilled was the Toyota driver? After being struck by an oncoming truck (but apparently avoiding a “head-on”), he regains control, drives through the rubble, avoids contact with other traffic and after catching fire himself, brings his SUV to a stop some 100 feet down the road.
And how did that truck driver avoid colliding with countless more cars of oncoming traffic? Did he intentionally “lay down” his truck to break its forward momentum? We may never know. He didn’t get to tell his story.
The seven lane Tappan Zee Bridge has a rather unique center median “movable barrier system”. The entire barrier is made up of individual blocks of concrete which are linked together. Twice a day, this barrier is moved from one side of the center lane to the other – allowing an extra lane for the rush hour side of traffic. The barrier looks pretty substantial, but it obviously wasn’t substantial enough to hold off the truck.
For the Toyota in this story, the event unfolded from the “other side of the road”. When did he realize he had a problem? Was he watching the oncoming traffic further down the other side of that median? Did it give him his edge? How was he able to avoid what could have easily been sudden death for him and his passengers?
On a two way highway, with a yellow line or two down the middle, we probably all keep a pretty keen eye on the oncoming traffic. What the heck? It’s out in front of us anyway, pretty easy to keep an eye on – and there’s only those yellow lines to separate us from a serious “head-on”.
But do medians and buffers between the opposing traffic perhaps offer us a false sense of security? Is that oncoming traffic simply a blur whizzing by us, or are we still watching for problems further on down the “other side of the road?”
A couple of months ago I pulled onto a six lane highway – three lanes each way divided by about thirty feet of median filled with trees, shrubs and whatever. Drive it all the time. You can pretty much see through the greenery to the other side of the road, but that “other side” was never really on my radar screen – until that morning.
Suddenly I heard a terrific crunch. Couldn’t place it. Wasn’t in front of me, wasn’t in my rear views and it definitely wasn’t me - I was still intact! But I knew from the sound that it was close and it was serious. In a couple of more seconds it did appear in my left rear view. I watched as a car from the “other side of the road”, apparently having crashed through the trees, rolled over a few times and landed right in the lane where I had just been – upside down and sideways.
I now watch the “other side of the road”. It’s definitely on my radar screen unless that median is absolutely bullet proof – and Freightliner proof! Maybe I’ll see something. Maybe it’ll give me an edge. Maybe I’ll be able to escape tragedy – like that Toyota driver did on the Tappan Zee.
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