We were on our way to St. George for the UMEA Convention about midnight Thursday night after choir rehearsal, hoping to get there soon enough to get a few hours sleep before having to go to the convention center. Mom decided to go so we left a little later than I had hoped to get away. As we approached the South Nephi/Levan exit I suddenly saw in the darkness what I thought was a large living room sofa in the middle of my lane. I swerved into the left lane (there was no other traffic) and hit it with a somewhat glancing blow that ended up breaking off the passenger side of my front bumper, just missing the headlight, and pulling halfway off the rear bumper cover so it now drags on the ground when driving. We pulled off to the side of the road to see what damage it had caused, and hoped to get back to it and move it off of the road so someone else would not also hit it. As soon as I got out of the car, a semi hit it dead center and pulled off to the side of the road behind us. The truck driver and I went back to see what it was, joined by Mom.
Expanded metal shelf on steel frame
It ended up being one of those shelves made of tubular steel covered with expanded metal, designed to fit into the receiver for a trailer hitch on the back of a car, smaller than the ones on pickups and cars like our Suburban. This shelf had at least two dozen backpacks and duffle bags with clothing, shoes, and other personal effects including library books and homework that were now scattered in a wide area across both lanes of traffic southbound on the freeway.
Debris scattered across both freeway lanes.
The photo of the debris field is lighted by the headlights of two highway patrol cruisers on high beam and taken from near the cars looking west. The semi can be seen on the upper-right of the photo. We were parked in front of it. When debris like this is encountered by someone driving a smaller vehicle it can be very dangerous if it is hit, and also dangerous because of those trying to swerve around such obstacles if there is traffic.
Here is the broken-off corner that hit the debris
Please be aware of things you may be transporting and report any kind of debris immediately to the highway patrol so it can be removed from the road space as quickly as possible. This debris in the road caused several thousand dollars of damage to the two vehicles that hit it. I believe that if I had hit this directly we could have been very seriously injured or killed. I am grateful that we were not hurt and the semi driver was not hurt either. We were both quite upset at the situation but also pacified that neither of us were injured personally.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Dad. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
