<\/p>\n
Interstate 40 is big, bad, and nationwide.\u00a0 Its two terminal In North Carolina it is not unusual to see a massive group of cars, This is a situation where even professionals can be intimidated into Professional driving is subject to the laws of averages just like It adds up.\u00a0 Not just the casual way gore keeps budging into your But mostly it’s the people.\u00a0 These obnoxious, deranged, uneducated How am I driving?<\/em><\/p>\n Terrible.\u00a0 Muck-minded bagel in one hand cell in the other driving with my knees talk radio focused shithead.<\/p>\n If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you.<\/em><\/p>\n It’s true.\u00a0 But a trucker can tell, sometimes.\u00a0 You’re back Back off.<\/em><\/p>\n On a long enough timeline, a professional driver will face a moment in Just outside of Greensboro, North Carolina, late December.\u00a0 Driver A Hazmat team was immobilized.\u00a0 The traffic jam swelled, backed up Imminent danger like that tends to lead to investigations. I think any driver knows the truth.\u00a0 Humphrey thought of every He’ll get off unpunished for the most part.\u00a0 Maybe he’ll get Hisssssssssssssssssssssss…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\npoints are Barstow, California and Wilmington, NC, and in between it
\nruns like a modern-day Route 66 through eight states: mountains,
\nplains, deserts, filthy cities.\u00a0 But there are no songs written
\nabout Interstate 40, perhaps because its sedative, boring run is only
\ninterrupted by severe sections around major cities where everyone
\nbarrels down the on-ramps and immediately starts a panicked freakout
\nlike light-blinded cockroaches.\u00a0 Everyone wants into that left
\nlane.\u00a0 Everyone wants to get the hell away from the city.
\nEveryone wants to move<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nriding one hundred strong like some suburban Hell’s Angel pack, racing
\nacross four lanes in unison, bumper to bumper and maintaining 85 miles
\nper hour while the State Troopers merely watch and wait for someone to
\ndisrupt the flow.\u00a0 It’s pure anarchy out there, even in the
\nmidday.\u00a0 The idea is that rush hour could start at any moment of
\nthe day and come without warning like the Rapture and oh, Jesus, we
\nshall have our hearts and minds ready.<\/p>\n
\nacting like mindless creatures plugged into big machines beyond their
\ncontrol.\u00a0 The professional drivers, the deliverymen, movers,
\ntruckers: they rise like elephants stuck in a herd of galloping
\nantelope, and their minds can trigger into thinking, yes, I, too, am an
\nantelope.\u00a0 I will run.\u00a0 And the destruction begins.<\/p>\n
\nanything else.\u00a0 The longer you stay on the road, the more likely
\nyou are to see on a regular basis the kinds of things that disturb the
\nnormal Sunday drivers.\u00a0 A prison guard dropping a
\nlitter-retrieving inmate worker who was veering a little to close to
\nthe woods.\u00a0 A loose log flying off a truck into a
\nwindshield.\u00a0 Near-misses.\u00a0 Close calls.\u00a0 All manner of
\ncarnage, both mechanical and visceral: deer, dogs, Nissans,
\nChevys.\u00a0 Running the highways for cash amplifies your exposure to
\nDeath.\u00a0 You start to expect it.\u00a0 White sheets with little
\nspots of red soaking through.\u00a0 Flashlights bobbing above the dark
\nmedian search for a body part that was thrown clear of the
\nwreckage.\u00a0 Death as a working condition.\u00a0 Death as the
\ncoworker no one likes.<\/p>\n
\nlife, but also the speed, the fumes, the long miles, the sharp
\ncurves.\u00a0 Fatigue stinks up the cab.\u00a0 Vibrations remain in
\nyour hands even after you let go of the wheel.\u00a0 Nerves wear down
\nlike steel on a grindstone.\u00a0 Watch the sparks fly.<\/p>\n
\nretards of the road.\u00a0 They pinch and scratch, claw for
\nposition.\u00a0 They make swift lane changes and pull stunts that, if
\nthey were watching from a different vantage point, say, from up in a
\nten-foot cab, they’d never do.<\/p>\n
\nthere, you’re riding the bumper of a twenty-ton mobile structure you
\ncan’t see around.\u00a0 Or you’re one lane over, maneuvering for
\nposition, yanking your wheel and pulling in front of a diesel-powered
\nmonster incapable of making a quick stop.<\/p>\n
\nhis career where it just seems right, moral, socially acceptable, and
\njustifiable to just let something happen.\u00a0 Let physics take over
\nand follow this series of events to its natural conclusion.\u00a0 The
\nuniverse wants it to happen.\u00a0 The only thing preventing this is
\nthe driver’s own sense of pride, but when pride squares off against
\ninstinct and rage…it’s always the underdog.<\/p>\n
\nJones Humphrey is westbound, maintaining a speed of seventy miles per
\nhour in a silver tanker truck when someone pulls out in front of him
\nwith a proximity that is close even by professional standards.
\nFacing an inevitable crash, Humphrey has a few options; he’s been
\ntrained to deal with this situation in a relatively safe manner.
\nHe could probably contain the carnage.\u00a0 Ultimately, though, his
\ntanker ends up overturned and blocking three lanes of traffic, bleeding
\ngasoline through the punctured tank.\u00a0 Unleaded runs clear on the
\nhighway.<\/p>\n
\nfor at least ten miles.\u00a0 People were yelling from their windows at
\nsmokers; cigarettes got stubbed out or lit up\u2014stress relief and
\nprotest.\u00a0 Hazmat does their job, sprinkling down some innocuous
\npowder.\u00a0 The truck gets towed off the interstate.\u00a0 Slowly the
\nmess is cleaned up and traffic starts moving again.\u00a0 But the
\naftermath of that split-second decision held up hundreds of people for
\nthe better part of the day and put the fear of a fiery Armageddon into
\nthem.\u00a0 One spark and they were all doomed captives…explosions
\nwould rock back down the interstate like dominoes.<\/p>\n
\nHumphrey was interviewed and the insinuations were made: perhaps he did
\nthis on purpose.\u00a0 Maybe he’s disturbed.\u00a0 Maybe he’s latently
\nhomicidal.\u00a0 Maybe he didn’t<\/em> just get caught up in a situation beyond his control.<\/p>\n
\njackass who’d come too close to his truck over the years, remembered,
\nsplit-second style, all the faces of others looking up into his cab:
\ndisdain, resentment.\u00a0 They don’t even know how their capitalistic
\nworld would be retarded without him, without all the drivers.
\nThey don’t even know how close to getting flattened they come every
\nday, how much rage a driver holds inside his body, how it swells his
\ngallbladder and repaves his stomach.\u00a0 They’re all driving blind,
\nso, maybe, Humphrey thinks, they’ll see this as just another accident,
\nnot a willful act of revenge.\u00a0 Maybe I can get away with it.
\nMaybe I can watch as they realize how dangerous this highway is, and
\nhow I’m the only thing between them and a righteous inferno.<\/p>\n
\nfired, but trucking companies are always hiring.\u00a0 It’s almost
\nimpossible to find enough people to drive all the tankers
\nnowadays.\u00a0 It’s test-pilot danger at shop clerk pay.\u00a0 No one
\nwants to do it.\u00a0 They’re even considering repealing a law that
\nsays convicted arsonists can’t drive tankers.\u00a0 So Humphrey will
\nhave another job if he wants it, and maybe, with this act, he’s
\nunloaded enough pressure so that his internal moral brakes are
\nfunctioning again, ready to clamp down hard and save us all.<\/p>\n