Frozen Joy Ride

On a rare occasion, cold meets wet in my part of the world causing a glazing of ice on everything. Trees fall, power lines break, and overpasses become a ride that some would stand in line for at 6 Fl*gs. The south is not prepared to handle any kind of frozen precipitation nor are the citizens trained to drive on it. Basically, the town shuts down till everything thaws.

On one such day, I was dispatched to assist a motorist whose car was in a ditch after sliding off the roadway on a thick layer of ice. The car was in the median on the east side of the overpass. No one was injured. The car looked drivable, just stuck in the soft muck of the median. I spoke with the driver who said that she was eastbound, hit the ice and literally spun completely around on the bridge. She was traveling in reverse when her driver’s side struck the bridge railing. The impact spun her car back forward and she slid from the road into the ditch in the median.

I asked her to cross the roadway and wait at a store for the tow truck. I got out my Incident/Offense book to fill out a wreck report. I walked around to check for damage on the car and get the vehicle identification number for my report. I was on the road side of the car when I heard the most bizarre whirring noise. I looked up in time to see a vehicle popping across the overpass in a full spin. It was coming right for me! The noise was made by rubber tires sliding sideways across iced pavement.

The car was spinning like a top across the bridge in an easterly direction. My geometry training kicked in and I began running toward it angling just slightly north. For a 30 something woman on muddy, icy grass carrying 30 pounds of extra weight, I was impressive! I took off like I did in high school out of the starting blocks. The car spun past me and slammed into the side of the car in the median. It pushed the car a good 50 feet.

The wrecker driver witnessed the whole thing. He said that he thought I had lost my mind when I started running at the spinning car. Laughingly, I told him that I learned that in a physics class. I knew that the only safe direction was to run past the car before it collided with anything. That way, no matter which direction things went from there, they couldn’t go backwards. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he didn’t get that but he never knew I could move so fast! Both cars had to be towed and we closed the bridge before anyone else could enjoy the thrill of that particular ride.