Mist Connection

I was driving to work on the beltway today as usual, but a little bit later than normal, it was probably 9:00AM or so right around when I was getting on. This was before the big straight hill that lets me know when it's almost time to exit on my way home.

Well anyway, traffic appeared to be moving really fast and everyone was going 55-65 miles an hour, which is what you do on a 55mph limit highway when there's essentially no traffic. But then, basically out of nowhere, the traffic came to an almost standstill for a little bit after about a mile. It even caught me by surprise, and I had to put the brakes on fairly quickly to make sure I stayed a safe distance from the car in front of me.

I'm not sure exactly what I noticed was happening first. There was a blue BMW on the leftmost lane (I was in the 2nd-to-leftmost lane) about two or three car lengths in front of me. I think what I noticed first was that it was pulling to the left, to the shoulder of the road. I didn't really understand why. Then, over my left shoulder came a speeding truck. It wasn't just a pick-up, but it wasn't an 18-wheeler - it was one of those short-haul trucks that could maybe carry backhoe or two on its bed. But it was seriously barreling through the lane right at this car, and I put together why she was moving out of the lane. It was all happening really, really quickly though and I wasn't sure the car would make it out of the way on time.

As the truck got closer - probably going something like 40 or 50 mph - the car just veered left and pulled forward to get out of the way of the truck, and at almost the last second, the truck veered right, into my lane. Right in front of me. Somehow it actually managed to kill a lot of its speed in that swing into my lane, and slowed down in maybe a second or so after it was in my lane. The blue BMW pulled back into its lane. I'm sure the driver's heart was beating a mile a minute. I suppose I didn't say this explicity, but if that truck had barreled into her car, it would have done really serious damage. Probably it wouldn't have been fatal, since it was from the rear, but it's still not something anyone would ever want to experience.

I realized later that if I had been side-by-side with that blue BMW, the truck probably would have plowed right into me, for lack of anywhere else to go, in an attempt to avoid a definite hit of the other car. When I was thinking about that possibility in my head, I couldn't help but think that I would enjoy that it would get me off from work for a day.

I pulled up to the blue BMW later, side-by-side, to see how the driver was doing. It was a pretty attractive 40-something woman with black hair and large sunglasses, and it seemed like she was doing fine. I don't know how she knew that truck was coming though. I didn't hear it, I don't think it's horn was blowing or anything; I definitely never would have known.

Peace out.