Slip Sliding Away

Winter driving can be an adventure. I don't worry about my own driving... it's everyone else on the road that I get concerned about. The roads were fine today, but I was thinking back a couple years to one of my more memorable trips to work one morning...

It was early one winter morning. We had gotten a few inches of snow, with some ice on the ground below it, so the driving conditions were not all that great. I decided to take the back roads to work, figuring there would be less traffic, so less idiots to try to dodge during my trip. That was probably a mistake.

I had just left town and headed north bound on Stark Road. There were a few cars, but not a lot of traffic, so I figured everything was going as planned. The roads were bad, so I was driving pretty much the same as everyone else... pretty slowly... about 40 mph or so.

As I was going along I noticed ahead of me... coming at me... that there must have been an impatient driver. She was in my lane, and it looked like she was passing the car in front of her. I thought that was kinda odd, given the road conditions. Then I realized that she wasn't trying to pass anyone... her van was fishtailing. She had lost control of her vehicle and was coming straight at me in my lane. The car I had "thought" she was passing was in the other lane, so there was no place for me to go. Nice.

My first thought was "Damn, I just paid off this truck and took full coverage off of it." My second thought was "That's probably a dumb thing to be thinking about right now." I knew I couldn't panic or slam on my brakes, because then I'd lose control of my vehicle too, and then it would really get ugly... so I let off the gas and started to pump the brakes (I know anti-lock brakes are supposed to take care of that, but that's just instinct for me). Then I noticed that the fishtailing van was starting to drift toward the ditch, so I figured this was my only chance... A small space was opening up between the two vehicles. I didn't know if it would be big enough, but I didn't have a lot of options... I aimed right between the two of them. The van continued to drift into the ditch, and I somehow squeezed through with literally less than an inch to spare between the vehicles on each side of me.

I stopped and went back to see if everyone was ok. The van driven by the woman wound up going into the ditch, but she was fine. And no, she wasn't running around in her underwear shouting "Help me Tom Cruise". It wasn't that that bad, but the van was kinda dented up from the ditch and she did look pretty scared. It turns out the guy in the other lane was her husband. They were supposed to be following each other to town to make sure they made it safely, so I didn't have to wait with her for a tow truck to get there.

I kinda thought they might say something like "Thanks for not smashing head first into either of us" but they were a little shook up, so I let it slide.

I'm sure everyone has a story like this, and I have a bunch more, but something just made me think of this one today. So, everyone be careful out there, and keep it between the ditches... and in your own lane whenever possible ;-)