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Many people are surprised that I was a " big rig" delivery driver for nearly 20 years. Chances are good that I would still be delivering groceries to Los Angeles and Northern California neighborhood grocery stores if it had not been for the accident.
I was driving southbound on highway 99 after making a delivery in Rocklin. It was about 9 in the morning. There wasn't much fog that day. It was around the Christmas holiday. There was a family in a minivan about to pass me. A northbound truck filled with Best Buy electronics crossed the median and stuck the minivan killing all three occupants, including a baby. My trailer was ripped into shreds as the inertia of the 70,000 pound truck continued and stuck another truck whoes driver suffered burns on the majority of his body.
I unclear whether the driver that crossed the median fell asleep or had a heart attack. eyewitness narratives indicate that the driver was ejected from his truck and landed in a pool of burning diesel fuel unable to escape the flames because of heavy objects holding his legs down. Witnesses were helpless to answer his pleadings for help. The flames were too intense. Nobody could help him.
It was a very dramatic scene that shut highway 99 down for a couple of days. First reports to the fire department characheterized the accident as a tanker explosian. For about half an hour it was chaos and resembleed what some called a battlefied. Explosions and thick, black smoke marked that morning.
So I was literally milliseconds away from death. It's weird to think about it. If I hadn't stopped for coffee, if I pressed the accelerator peddle just a little bit more in Sacramento it would have all been just a story that I read. If the accelarator peddle was not pressed enough in Elk Grove I would have been a gonner.
   
Crackhead?
On January 15, 2008 I was driving northbound 99 just south of Traver. I was coming back from a job in Farmersville and remember how relaxed I felt. So relaxed, I set the cruise control at 60 mph and stayed in the slow lane. I changed the radio station and glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed a red car coming at me...fast. I remember thinking " no. he's not going to hit me" and then he did. hard. So hard, in fact, it bent the frame on my heavy truck knocking me into another lane where I narrowly missed being run over by a big rig truck.
I pulled over to the side of the road as did the red Prius. Both of our cars were not drivable. Crazy stuff. I ended up in an ambulance, strapped to a board for a couple of hours. The kicker was the insurance company offered me about $500 less than what the hospital bill were. Gee, thanks for the privilage of being hit and having my life turned uside down. It was such a cool expereicne that I'm happy to pay the extra money.
I thought fore sure the guy that hit me was on crack for 72 hours or more. Nobody just goes around read ending people like that. It's not sane.
The story was the driver " thinks he fell asleep".
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Crashes