Close Call...

I've been busy, and so I did not blog about this very dark near miss my mother and I had with a tractor trailer on highway 410. I did not write about the day it happened and can never really be sure of what door number two may have presented had I opened it. That day in fact was Monday November 16th. I am thankful that my destiny did not include door number two since behind that door was certainly an ugly one.

Don, what the hell are you talking about just spit it out!

OK, so my mother and I were on our way to a 5:30pm meeting at the Toronto General Hospital. Going at our usual speed of 100km/hr down 410 it was moderately busy but traffic was flowing. In front of us and in the lane to the right was a tractor trailer going the same speed. In the blink of an eye I watched as a large metal part snapped off the belly of his trailer and fly into my lane, the part was roughly the size of a sewing machine and smashed into a dozen or so very dangerous fragments. In what felt like a split second I looked to the lane on my left and chose to make a dangerous lane change with only inches between me and the car in that lane. Had he been beside me I would not have had this option and would have had a large fragment go directly through my windshield. I know this because in the lane where I was only a split second ago I watched the large piece fly past my passenger side window and then as gravity pulled it to the ground it went into the grill of the vehicle that was behind me in that lane. Instantly I saw smoke in my rear view mirror and the car spin out of control landing fairly safely on the right shoulder approximately 200 meters ahead. I quickly made my way to that same shoulder, and watched as two more cars ran over the same material that influenced our sudden change in plans...

No one was hurt! I was thankful, and sharing a quick conversation with the man with serious damage to his vehicle I reflected on the geometry that would have rendered the inside of my vehicle a mass of flying glass and obvious bodily harm.

Anyone who knows me knows that I generally freak out in situations like these, but for some odd reason I was as calm as a duck pond on a warm windless day.

After inspecting my own vehicle and finding no damage, I gave the man my telephone number in case he needed a witness and was on my way...

The only other bad thing to happen that night was a parking ticket for being parked on gerrard avenue during rush hour. This I barely blinked at after nearly being killed... :)

Cheers!