Narrow escape from highway chaos

[Doyt W. Echelberger]

At about 8 am this morning I was driving my 87 5ktq  east into the sun,
on  my way to Cleveland, Ohio.  My wife was in the passenger seat, reading
the morning paper.  Traffic was moving briskly at the legal limit, and
there were lots of cars and trucks around us.

Suddenly for about 5 seconds the limited access highway around us turned
into a scene much like the crashes you see on television when you are
watching almost any big racing event. Cars and 18 wheelers zig-zagging
across lanes and swerving onto the berm, and a brief image of an
oncoming  (westbound) beige car careening sideways at 90 degrees as it
jumped the median into our lanes, skidded between vehicles in our eastbound
traffic, and slammed into a light pole on the ditch-side of our highway,
knocking the pole off it's base.  In what seemed like slow motion, the pole
came slowly arcing down across the road ahead, like the boom of a big crane
that was tipping over.  The light element on the pole smashed directly into
the center of the road ahead of me, and exploded into a shower of flying glass.

I was in the passing lane when it all started, and most of the frantic
activity was in the slower traffic lane to my right.  Everybody ahead was
showing brake lights, so I had to jump on the discs pretty hard. My next
thought was to drop off onto the center median if the car ahead stayed on
his brakes, but that never happened and we were all past the wrecks and
fallen pole in about 3 seconds, and people were pulling off the road on the
right and stopping on the shoulder, and running back toward the accidents,
so I just stayed in the passing lane and kept moving, looking in the rear
mirror.

We were still alive, hadn't hit anything, and it was all over so fast that
my wife just barely had time to look up from the newspaper. She didn't even
scream. I had to explain to her what we had just been through, and why I
had braked so suddenly.

For a brief moment, I had the perspective of a race car driver that is
moving through a crash scene, with other cars changing lanes almost
instantly to avoid obstacles........and I experienced a time warp in which
each instant seemed to last forever....  I didn't like it at all.  And I'm
glad I was driving with both hands on the wheel and at an assured clear
distance, at a legal speed, and without the distractions of a radio or a
cell phone. For a while, I'll probably drive  with even more distance
between me and the car ahead, and maybe with my right foot ready to tap the
brake...

Stay alive out there.

Doyt Echelberger