I want you to imagine you are taking a nice drive. Maybe it's the afternoon, you will be home soon, you will focus on things you'd rather be doing than driving or working. Now take a look at your rear-view mirror, and imagine this monstrosity bearing down on you. That was similar to what happened to me, although to be honest, there wasn't enough time to look in my mirror...
It was either late April, or early May ( I know this because I was in school pursuing an engineering degree at the time. Finals were right around the corner, and I had planned a study session when I got home that night). It was a gorgeous day, sun shining, maybe 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. It was the kind of day that Arizonans who live in the Phoenix metro area love, because they know the blowtorch that is the Arizona summer would be coming soon, and any cool day before that would be enjoyed to its fullest.
I was driving back to the GM proving grounds in east Mesa. I was driving an Oldsmobile minivan (yes, they did make those back then!). My minivan was towing a small trailer, with maybe 1000-2000 pounds on it (whatever the limit was for that particular vehicle). I had gone up to the forest town of Payson that day, and the last part of the schedule the GM engineers asked me to run was to take Hunt Highway, a desert road that led to the town of Florence, almost halfway to Florence, and then turn around and go back to the proving grounds. That was to be the end of my day. Here was what the minivan looked like, without the trailer:
I was on the return leg of the Hunt Highway part. I had turned around at the midpoint, and now was making my way northwest along Hunt Highway. Hunt Highway is a two lane road, normally fairly busy at 2:45 PM, the time I was on it. I drove along the road, keeping the speed limit, watching the scenery go by as it had on the way down. At some point, I came up behind a woman in a Ford Taurus station wagon. She was going about 5 miles per hour slower than the speed limit, but because Hunt Highway was such a dangerous road, I didn't dare try and pass her. I lowered my speed enough to where I wouldn't be tailgating her, and continued to enjoy the ride.
The minutes cruised by, and before I knew it, I passed the entrance to the quarry that was on Hunt Highway. As I passed the entrance, a truck, similar to this one, pulled out on to Hunt Highway behind me.
I had seen trucks like these numerous times. This area of Hunt Highway was in the middle of becoming a huge bedroom community in the southeast part of the Phoenix metro area, so there was always construction going on. I noticed the truck, called a belly dumper or bottom dumper, because it unloaded from the bottom of the trailer, but apart from keeping tabs on its following distance to me, which wasn't an issue, I didn't worry about it too much.
The next part happened very fast, and could be called a true miracle. Remember the woman in the Ford Taurus station wagon I mentioned earlier? Well, she applied her brakes and stuck her hand straight out the driver's window, pointing left. It took me a few seconds to figure out what she was doing, having not seen a driver use a hand signal for over a year at that point. What she was doing was giving me the hand signal for a left turn. I had begun braking while I was trying to figure out what she was doing, and as a result, was slowed down enough for her to make her turn without being a problem for her.
All of a sudden my minivan was smacked from behind. I didn't have time to react, it was all instict. I was pushed into the oncoming traffic lane, away from the woman in the station wagon who was stopped. Thankfully, she didn't move, and I was able to go around her, turning the wheel to the left and the right to counter the numerous skids that were the result of the car being hit so hard. When I was able to get the car under control, I made for the right side shoulder of the road, and got out to see just what had happened to me. It only took a quick look behind me to figure out the cause.
That belly dumper, the one that had pulled out behind me from the quarry, he is the one who had hit me. He and I were both OK, and the woman in the station wagon came over and checked on both of us. Thankfully she, and everyone in her car were OK as well. I called my boss at the GM Proving Grounds to report the accident, and sat back and waited for the tow truck to take me home.
I asked the driver of the belly dumper what had happened, and was amazed at what he told me. He had pulled out from the quarry as I said, and he started down the road, his trailer full of gravel for a construction site somewhere in Mesa. He, being higher up than me, noticed the woman slow and then stop, and then he noticed my brake lights, indicating that I was slowing, but he had a cigarette that needed to be smoked, and the lighter in the cab of the truck had just popped, indicating that it was ready to light his cigarette. (Cigarette lighters were activated by pushing them in. They would make a popping sound after a minute or so, indicating that the element inside the lighter was now hot enough to light a cigarette). The driver of the truck told me that he bent over to light his cigarette, took his eyes off of the road, and that's when he hit me. Cars today don't come with lighters anymore, but this is what they used to look like:
Interestingly enough, your car still has this in it, although it's not used for lighting cigarettes anymore. Look at the following picture, in the area in front of the gear shift lever. That round opening would have been a cigarette lighter had this been a car from the 70s. Now it's a 12 volt auxiliary power unit for your personal electronics.
But back to the story. I mentioned that this was a bit miraculous in the beginning, and that was not hyperbole. The time of the day I was on that road, and the stretch of road it happened on, normally would have been full of cars. Had it been a normal day, I would have gotten punted from that semi in to oncoming traffic, and had a head on collision with a car doing 60, with me doing probably 25 to 30 because I was still slowing down for the lady in the station wagon. But that didn't happen. I was punted to the woman's left, while the truck went on to the shoulder of the road on the right. The woman, though completely stopped, was not touched by either car. The lack of cars in the area I was shoved in to, combined with the woman and her kids not getting touched, are why I said this was miraculous.
That accident happened 17 years ago, but it is still the worst accident I have ever been in. Thankfully everyone came out OK, and the only damage was to two vehicles, and the driving career of the belly dump driver, who told me as we were waiting for the tow trucks that this was his second accident in less than a year, and that he was likely to lose either his job, or his license, or both, because of this. I never heard what happened to the driver of the truck, but I do hope everything worked out well for him, as well as the luck, and divine providence, worked out for all of us on that day. Until next time....
