Size [I]does[/I] matter!

[Slave to the Phone]

I live out in the sticks. While we do have chip sealed roads, they are narrow and usually have culvert ditches next to them. The road in front of our home has a very gentle curve which tends to result in people ending up stuck in a ditch if they aren't paying attention. There is also an electric transformer box on home side of the ditch between our driveway and the next door neighbor's home. Around said transformer box are some concrete things to stop people from hitting the box.

And even more background: The lady across the street is in the process of moving out. Her driveway has double gates and she sometimes has issues backing her pick-up out of them.

She rented the biggest U-Haul moving truck she could without having a CDL license. She left it in the road and dragged a bunch of stuff out to the street so she could load it, but when it got dark, she realized that she couldn't leave that big truck out in the street so pulled it nose first through the gates. Truck was almost touching her old place and was only a foot away from the road.

Now comes the fun part! The next morning, she needed to back it out so they could leave. Remember the ditches and transformer box? Yeah, I thought so.

Sadly, she didn't. As she was trying to make a 200 point turn while missing the gateposts, she backed one wheel over the concrete things to drop the left back tire into the ditch which caused the corner of the truck to push the electrical box out of its way while the entire mess settled down all kitty-wampus. Right front tire off the road, tipping at about a 15-20 angle.

When it comes to my neighbors, I tend to be Magenta "...unseen, I see all."

This time, I hurried down and yelled at everyone to stop and not touch anything. Of course, they all looked at me like I had lost my mind, so I said something like "I might have watched too many videos, but wouldn't you think that maybe that U-Haul is now electric? If I was you, I wouldn't touch any metal."

Her son yelled "YES!!! I've seen the same movies, NOBODY touch the truck!!!"

The lady was able to hop out of the truck and was just fine. Except the part about hearing things shift and break inside the truck. I called the electric company, who must have called the Sheriff because they arrived first.

As the police were asking what had happened, the lady never once said a word about what she was thinking when she rented a truck that size for a local move. While it wasn't my place to ask, I was really hoping one of the cops would have said something. (Like: What the heck were you thinking, you dumbbunny!!!")

[protege]

What? No "that's what she said" comments from the peanut gallery?


But seriously, I've seen people do that all the time at work. No electrical boxes involved, but I've seen semis get caught up on the tight corner near the industrial park. If they don't take the corner carefully, there's no way they'll get onto the Route 8 ramp to head north. At least not without hitting the fence, Jersey barrier, bridge abutment, or taking out stop signs with the trailer. Nearly every day, I get free entertainment during my lunch hour, when some trucker manages to hit one of those things. The worst though, had to be the idiot who took the corner too wide, and got his trailer on *top* of the Jersey barrier

He's tied up there with the driver who missed the corner pulling out of the nearby Circle K, clipped the bank, and pulled down their electrical connections, knocking out power for the entire block, and getting ripped a new one by the cops.

[EricKei]

I've seldom seen anything that bad -- even in NOLA -- tho my personal "best" (if you can call it that) involves the time I *avoided* being in a large pileup because our car ...er...unexpectedly....left the road. Best I saw from back home was some sports car that ended up on top of a V-shaped wedge of guardrails at an exit.

[Slave to the Phone]

We do get out of area semi-truck drivers that try to make a U-turn across the main street to get back to the highway at times. I feel badly for them, they are lost in a rural area where interweb/cell connection can be spotty.

The road they are on is a 1-lane road heading away from the highway. To turn around, you have to cross a car-length medium and then turn left onto the lane going in the opposite direction. Both roads have deep culvert ditches next to them and the medium is just a wider ditch.

Its easy enough to do in a car. The ditches tend to catch semis and RV's. If I happen to come across someone getting ready to try it in a vehicle that I can tell won't make it, I stop my car and bail out while yelling at them to stop.

Sometimes they listen to me and drive straight down the road for half a mile until it loops back around allowing them to just head straight back to the highway. Sometimes they ignore me and get stuck.

[notalwaysright]

Sometimes they listen to me and drive straight down the road for half a mile until it loops back around allowing them to just head straight back to the highway. Sometimes they ignore me and get stuck.

I grew up out in the sticks, and it was very rare to see a semi on our street but once in a while it happened, if someone was clearing land to build a house or something. Once when I was walking home from the bus I managed to talk a truck driver out of trying to turn around on a tiny dirt road. He was like "but I just made a wrong turn right back there, I need to get to *other street*" And I was like "follow this road, it loops back to the connecting road to *other street*! You can see it on the map!"

Also this was before everyone had cell phones, certainly before smartphones, so I was fairly sure he had a paper map.