I picked a bad week to drive a truck!

On Wednesday (Oct 7), I was driving at 60 MPH in a 60 MPH zone (I-5 northbound near SeaTac, Washington, USA) in the 2nd-from-the-right lane (rightmost lane being an exit only between the SR516 onramp and the newly completed SR509 offramp) when I was suddenly struck from behind by a white Tesla. Driving a big box truck, I have a complete blind spot to anything happening completely behind me (my mirrors only show me what's approaching from behind in the lanes immediately on my left and right, but not what's behind me in the actual lane I'm in). The Tesla was immediately, fully disabled with its tires locked, and was subsequently struck from behind by a blue VW. The Tesla was obviously driving ridiculously fast (again they rear-ended me hard and I was going freeway speed), and I'm not sure if the Tesla cut off the VW before the VW had an opportunity to re-establish a safe following distance (this is possible but not likely since almost no regular drivers follow safe following distances) or the the VW was following the Tesla too close (in which case they would also have matched the Tesla's excessive speed) and/or not paying attention to the road ahead. The Tesla clearly at fault for hitting me, and unless the Tesla had also cut off the VW, the VW should be at fault for hitting the Tesla. The Tesla driver did, at least, have insurance, but the VW driver did not -- a bit irrelevant to me, since the VW did not come into contact with my truck. The impact damaged my liftgate rollers and dented my DOT bar. Given how Tesla hoods are, the DOT bar very much did its job. If it hadn't been for the DOT bar, the low hood of the Tesla would have gone under the rear of my truck, which would put the rear of my truck slicing through the windshield of the Tesla and the driver's head. The driver obviously drove recklessly, but I still couldn't help but feel bad as when first responders finally blocked off that lane of traffic and she was able to get out, she ran to the shoulder where I was standing, leaned back into the jersey barrier then sank herself down to sit on the pavement and collapsed into tears.

That was the third ever crash of my 11-year trucking career, five years past my last crash. I was really hoping it would be a few more years until my next one, but fate decided otherwise.

The very next effing day, I was stuck in very heavy, thick military base traffic (JBLM). Given the location of my home base, I drive this every work day but even as commonly thick and slow traffic is there, it was unusually bad, down from its usual 10-15 MPH on this 60 MPH freeway down to 5 MPH or less. I was in the second-from-the-right lane, as the right lane ends and must merge with the left. Traffic tries to sneak by on that right lane to get ahead and force its way into the left lane, and a tractor-trailer was among them -- as frustrated as I am with the everyday driver trying to get themselves ahead uncivilly by putting the civil drivers farther behind, I get extra irked when a fellow "professional driver" is among them. Traffic was so much worse than usual, it would take an extra long time for me to generate any space in front of me for that tractor-trailer to get in, frustrated as I was I knew it had to happen. I happened to glance at my left mirror, which given my concerns on the right as well as the fact traffic beside and ahead of me in that left lane waasn't moving any faster, I hadn't paid attention to -- but I had to do a double-take when I realized that after the car at my left front fender and the car behind it directly beside my driver door, there was several hundred feet of open lanespace. Wow! Even though, again, I knew I would not get ahead in that lane since that lane was not moving faster, I did come to a stop so the two vehicles beside me on my left would clear my front bumper so I could move into that empty lanespace. Due to the ultraslow crawl speed of traffic, it took a lot longer than normal to complete this lane change, but I did complete it and glanced right (still had a peripheral view directly ahead) to keep track of the semi's progress as I expected them to take the lane space on my right I had just cleared for them when BAM! suddenly felt a jolt from behind. I checked my mirrors carefully but couldn't see what had hit me. It was not possibly the semi, as their trailer was still in the far right lane while they were in the process of changing lanes. It took a solid chunk of time, at least 30 seconds or so (which is a lot longer than you might expect while driving) before the tractor's trailer cleared my view and I saw a damaged bright green Toyota off the side of the freeway on the grass.

First concern was definitely the Toyota driver, so as soon as I could, I hopped out. She was bumbling about, she hugged and kissed her damaged car. I tried to ask if she was okay, but she didn't seem to notice me while affectioning her vehicle, then turned toward me and jumped in startlement. "Oh, I didn't see you!" She made a number of incoherent remarks, including a mellow and soft-voiced remarked about "bad truck drivers" as though she hadn't realized I'm the truck driver she had just hit. I'm no good at any kind of investigating or assessing people, but I perceived what I thought was a slur. While the obvious conclusion jump is she was drunk, I was very worried that its just as possible she might have a concussion or something. As time went by and police arrived to investigate the incident, I kept my distance as the guy driving the semi was interviewed, I was as well of course, and the Toyota driver as well, I was pacing nervously and had some very long phone calls with my manager and my corporate safety department, as are required, and while pacing back and forth along my truck (opposite side of traffic of course), I couldn't help but notice they were interviewing her a long time, and ... whoop, yup, field sobriety test! Eventually another cop showed up ... and, yup, she was arrested. Of all the crashes I've been in, I never had more to-the-point declarations from a police officer: she was fully at fault, she was under arrest for DUI, the other truck driver and I are fully innocent, the cops gave us field mechanical inspections and passed us both (getting a good state patrol mechanical inspection report is broadly *good points* to have with a truck driver's employer often getting bonus pay just for those).