HIGHWAY SAFETY

We travel at lot it seems. The kids and grandchildren live one state away diagonally, but all the roads only go North-South or East-West. From experience, I can tell you it is easier driving in July than in January, despite the increased summer traffic.

Both trips we took last Winter were difficult to impossible. They closed the interstate ahead of us both times, forcing us to spend an overnight we hadn’t planned in one case and drive 150 miles out of our way in the other. In Iowa, I-80 wasn’t officially closed, but a semi driver we were about to pass decided to close it himself by ‘parking’ his truck sideways across the highway shoulder to shoulder. Because we were only seconds from passing him when he skidded and started spinning his truck around, we barely missed hitting him. Fortunately, the Fed-Ex tandem semi driver right behind us was a far more competent driver and got his rig stopped safely. In case you’re wondering, it took an hour for a wrecker to drive the wrong way down the interstate to tow the errant semi out of the way.

During our July trip, we stumbled upon a highway patrolman standing in the middle of our lane. He was picking up shreds of truck tire that were littering the road. I could tell he was bit anxious darting out between groups of vehicles to get his job done, but I commend him for doing it. Not far behind us was a group of a dozen motorcyclists, and those large strips of tire could have easily caused them a problem. In fact, there was a fair amount of out-of-state vehicles on the highway, an indication to us that families are using their summer to see the sites. And only a few drivers were hanging out in the left lane plodding along more slowly than everyone else.