Image via Midwest Safety/Facebook
Having your truck break down on the interstate is never a good situation. Even if you’re able to get over onto the shoulder, there are plenty of incidents where vehicles parked off the actual road are still hit. But having your ride give up the ghost in a lane of traffic as people are coming up at 65-plus mph is far worse.
A road rager was shot point blank during a recent confrontation.
Just such a situation unfolded on Interstate 35 near Forest Lake, Minnesota. A red Chevy Silverado sat disabled in the center lane, reportedly having hit a deer, which caused it to suddenly stop right in the middle of traffic.
You can see when the traffic camera zooms in there’s damage to the grille, so we’re willing to bet the radiator was punctured and the engine rapidly overheated. That’s a scary situation.
With the hazard lights on, the driver alerted others to the pickup’s disabled condition. The driver also left his door open, a move we’re not sure was wise or not.
It doesn’t take long for a stack of cars and commercial trucks to form behind the stationary Silverado. They’re able to filter into the other lanes as traffic in general slows down. It’s a miracle the pickup wasn’t hit almost immediately, something we see so often.
The unfortunate truth is not everyone is paying attention while they’re behind the wheel. They might be distracted, zoned out, or looking at something else on the road and miss something like a stopped vehicle.
Fortunately, the Chevy driver seems to understand this and gets out of the truck, moving to a safer position. That move saves his life because even though other passenger vehicles and commercial trucks see and dodge the bright red pickup, all it takes is one semi driver to not see and the Silverado is smashed so badly nobody inside would’ve survived the collision.
Even if they had, the maimed truck rolls to the shoulder and immediately becomes an inferno, guaranteeing death had the driver remained in the cab. This is why staying in a vehicle that’s disabled in a lane of traffic isn’t a great idea.
Image via Midwest Safety/Facebook
