Scariest Moment

Coming down a mountain grade in Montana. It was a volvo truck, prototype engine. No engine brakes. Full load in the trailer. I started going down the grade a little fast. I tried to slow down but the rpms and speed just went back up. Every ten seconds I was back on the brakes. I don't know what the max rpm of that engine was but I am sure I went well past it. I was really worried that I would smoke the brakes. Thankfully I didn't. I will tell you that the next hill I went down even slower.

 

When T/S Ike came last August my mom asked me to come pick her from work. If anyone is familiar with Target off Wickham in Melbourne, FL, you'll know the whole road is uneven thus making flooding easy. Well, as I turned the corner off wickham into Target I almost froze as I saw mom was in the water. Well I plucked her out and my pops towed her car back home. Needless to say she learned her lesson.

Another one:

Driving through a hurricane when I was 18 on I-95 with my family.

 

1991-92,I45 south of Dallas Tx.
3 vehicle crash 7 bodies ejected with what looked like they went thru a strainer.
1-2 year old laying on the hood of one of the cars holding a crayon.

Something you never forget . . . . . . .

 

This describes one of my scariest too....on the loop around DC, early afternoon. Traffic is thick but moving at about 55 MPH.

Mental midget in the far left lane...in a white Chrysler minivan decides he needs the right hand exit NOW....even though by the time he was on his way over, my steer tires had already passed the "open" part of the exit ramp. He came across 3 lanes, passed no more than 10 feet in front of me, crossing the white "zebra" lines & barely missing the impact barrels as he took the exit.

First & only time in 5 years I left rubber on dry pavement from an emergency braking maneuver.

The SCARIEST part was for the second he was in front of me, all I could see in the back of that van, was one or two of this guy's CHILDREN staring up at my truck in wide-eyed horror. I had my white-knuckle blizzards and icy roads too.....but at that ONE moment I thought I was staring into the eyes of the children I was about to kill. That was pretty intense.

 

Husband's got one of those, too, but I wasn't with him when it happened. No kids, but the wreck happened right in front of him on I-95; 3 cars involved, 2 fatalities. He saw everything happen, and as he started braking, saw a man get ejected from his car...he sailed across the left lane and hit his head on a guardrail; and I'm sure I don't need to describe the effect. The body came to rest in the middle of the left lane and my husband got his truck stopped about 20 yards from the body.

My husband actually had his wits about him immediately (I'm not sure if I would have)- called 911 as soon as he set the brakes, assessed the scene and found the only 2 victims who were still alive- same car- and stayed with them until help came.

I saw a lot of bodies in roads but I never saw one happen right in front of me like that. Husband's a lot more resilient than I am...something like that would have put me back in an office for a while.

 

This happened Tuesday, I spent the night at a truckstop and I'm ready to leave in the morning. I release the brake and immediatly start rolling backwards, there's a big dropoff behind me but there was big concrete blocks too. I mash the brakes, I look down make sure I'm on the brake pedal. I pull the brake valves, but I'm still rolling!!
The truck on my right was leaving and due to the angled parking slots I couldn't see the short truck on my left. Scared the **** out of me.

 

He heh... that happens to me too from time to time.

 

Ever been in the bunk and another truck rolls by fast enough to move your truck a bit or something similiar and you jump up trying to mash the brakes?
I raise my hand in guilt-

 

I jumped out of the sleeper once when parked in a pickle park behind another truck. I was killin' those brakes!

 

I just recalled something. I was parked at that T/A in Gallup NM once. There are train tracks that go right by the truck stop. I parked right by the tracks and went to sleep in the bunk.

A few hours into a deep sleep I was having a bad dream that I was stuck on a railroad crossing with a freight train fast approaching blowing the horn like crazy. Then I jumped out of the sleep only to hear the train horn still blowing, I thought for a few seconds I was really stuck on some railroad tracks somewhere. Then I saw the train pass in front of the truck and realized I was safe and sound in a truck stop. Somehow the line between a dream and reality was blurred for a brief moment. Weird