Hard Drivin’
Um, so. On our way home from the airport this afternoon, a combination
of Saturn traction control, some F-Zero driving, and a huge amount of
luck allowed us to avoid a 60mph collision with a large SUV that had
itself just collided with the concrete barrier on Highway 59.
Briskly-moving traffic plunged into a sudden rainshower that made the
air nearly opaque. We could see a large shape in the rapidly-approaching
distance, a black silhouette on gray, spinning out to the left and
smashing head-on into the wall. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.” At this
point my shock was sympathetic, and purely academic; we quickly checked
our mirrors and started to move to the rightmost lanes.
But the SUV wasn’t done; ricochet carried it, backward, wildly onto
the highway (the driver incapacitated, paralyzed by fear, or otherwise
unable to keep the vehicle in the shoulder). We were nearly upon it,
and it seemed that if we continued to dodge to the right it would chase
us, find us, and crush us against the barriers on the right.
I found myself swerving, hard, to the left this time,
and then powering the car on the shoulder past the SUV as it spun and
slid across all five lanes of traffic behind me.
We came within a couple of feet of the revolving, blunted snout of the
other car; Erin got an uncomfortably close view of what remained of its
headlights.
As shaken as I was, at least I had had the steering wheel; I do not envy
Erin the ineffectuality of the front passenger’s seat. We drove home in
near-silence, under full sun on the other side of the storm cell.