Narrow escape from highway chaos

[Brian Devlin]

They ought to ban those damned beige cars, they always do this.
-Brian

>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