Yeah, funny how moving things work --
I nearly got to be #4 in a chain reaction crash in Columbus, OH this
summer -- was blasting along in the left lane and suddenly saw a cloud
of blue/black smoke ahead and tromped on the brakes -- no way a cloud
of smoke on a crowded interstate inside a major city is gonna be GOOD
news. Sure enough, here comes a mini-van out of control, sliding
sideways, bounces off the median wall (there for just that purpose, I
suspect), and gets hit by the car behind it a couple times -- no way
you can stop a car going straight as fast as that van was slowing down
going sideway, after all. The car in front of me banged into them, not
real bad but enough to puncture the radiator. Luckily enough, it
stayed off the highway and we all managed to get onto the median and
out of traffic.
Good thing my 87 300D has antilock brakes! You can just stand on them
and concentrate on steering instead. I pulled off onto the median, and
stopped a bit back from the car in front of me, maybe 5 feet or so.
Turns out the guy in the van got distracted/was drunk/was stoned,
whatever, and rubbed on the driving wheels of a semi, lost control, and
spun -- I saw the initial smoke, he must have banged into the truck
again.
Nobody hurt, the van didn't crash into anything very hard, so I called
911 and reported it (handy things, cell phones...) and drove on when a
hole opened up in traffic.
Most other cars couldn't have stopped fast enough -- I do love those
Benz brakes!
Peter
