Image via Oklahoma Highway Patrol/Facebook
People are oftentimes looking for a sign they should or shouldn’t do a particular thing, but a trucker in Oklahoma instead didn’t pay attention and hit a sign with his trailer instead. The result is one of the more bizarre photos we’ve seen in a while, as shared by Oklahoma Highway Patrol, with the trailer sitting almost completely vertical against a partially demolished highway sign.
After a PIT maneuver, Dodge Ram driver gets out drinking a beer.
According to the law enforcement agency, the trucker who was hauling the trailer didn’t notice he was activating the hydraulics, lifting it higher and higher while traveling northbound on Interstate 35 the morning of August 27.
Eventually, the trailer reached the height where it smacked into not only the sign up above but the rather solid pole it’s attached to.
That sudden collision at highway speed was enough to rip the trailer tight off the tractor. We would pay good money to see the look on the trucker’s face the moment he realized what happened.
Fortunately, nobody was hurt in the incident. But the right lane on the interstate had to be shut down while crews used heavy equipment to get the trailer off the highway sign and clean up any debris.
In the meantime, we imagine the damaged signs had to be taken down and there’s a wait for replacements since they’re usually custom-ordered.
As for the trailer, we can’t tell from the single photo from a distance what kind of damage it sustained. Surely the connection to the tractor was mangled and we’d imagine where the trailer impacted the pole was also crunched at least a little.
Driver distraction is a real thing, not just for people commuting for work in their little Nissan or Chevy but also for truckers driving heavy equipment. Just the bigger machines can do far more damage when drivers aren’t attentive enough, making their distraction all the more devastating.
Image via Oklahoma Highway Patrol/Facebook
