Close call

This is a story I haven't told to very many people. There is a lesson in it for all of us if we want to take it.

It was about 7am on a clear spring morning. I was hauling a load of logs from the Oregon north woods to a mill up in Washington, can't remember what mill now. In Astoria I made the left hand turn onto the big bridge across the Columbia river to Washington. It's a four mile long drive to the other side with one lane of traffic in each direction. As I crested the top of the bridge I picked up gears as I looked out at the great view from about 250 feet above the river channel.

There are three old pilings on the west side of the bridge just east of the river channel and many mornings I would see a bald eagle or two sitting on those pilings, no birds this morning. I eased the 78' Kenworth northward over the long bridge toward Washington. As I crossed the center point of the bridge I watched a lone car headed south toward me. There was no other traffic in sight except for a car far behind in my mirrors. As the southbound car approached I saw that it was a woman driver, then she reached down for something on the passenger side floor. As she struggled to pick up whatever she was after her left hand was gripping the left side of the steering wheel as she leaned over further to grasp her prize on the far floor. I don't know if she was able to get what she was after but when she sat back up and looked ahead again her eyes became as big as baseballs, I could clearly see the whites of her eyes and the panicked look on her face as she saw a big truck directly in front of her no more than 100 feet or so away. She had pulled the left side of the steering wheel as she streched her reach and had swereved over the center line into my lane. I had nowhere to go as there is perhaps two feet or so of room outside the fog line then the gaurdrail of the bridge. I was allready over on the fog line and didn't dare swerve to try to avoid a collision. Somehow the panicked woman was able to get her car back into her own lane just a few feet from my front bumper, it was very very close! Now she was beside me back in her own lane but she was allmost sideways as the sudden swerve to miss me sent her into a bad skid at about 60 miles per hour or so. I watched in my mirrior and expected to see her hit my trailer wheels but somehow she missed me completely as she skidded behind me and out of my sight. I watched in my mirrors and suddenly she reappeared back in her own lane totally sideways and she slammed into the concrete wall of the bridge buckling the front of her car badly. I hit my brakes to try to stop to go back and help her but I was allready hundreds of feet away and still moving at about 50 mph or so. The traffic behind me was going to be there long before I could get stopped and get back to her car so I simply continued on with my trip. I have no idea if she was ok or if she suffered an injury but she hit the bridge wall very hard, like Dale Earnhardt at Daytona.

The lesson here is that she quit driving when she reached over for whatever it was and it allmost cost her her life. Never give another task full attention when you are driving. Driving is allways number one and everything else comes second, all the time.