Dodging bullets from on high

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Updated Jan 12, 2012

Look up, drivers. Just when you think you’re safe — rig in the lane, four-wheelers keeping a good distance off your back bumper, new regs falling from on high fully accounted for — occasionally, something like this happens.

Click through the link to watch a video interview (which aired last week on a local Georgia TV station) with Atlanta-based 25-year veteran hauler Danny Lower, about an incident in Catoosa County in his home state that could have been much worse than it was. Lower was cruising along smoothly on I-75 when a bolt “or a brick,” he told WRCB reporter Jonquil Newland, was thrown from an overpass and cracked his windshield. Luckily, it didn’t shatter and Lower was able to maintain control, get off the roadway and call the authorities (no luck there, though, as the perps got away before anyone arrived).

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In other overpass news, if you haven’t gotten yourself a hands-free headset as yet, word has it some jurisdictions are going out of their way to pick off violators of the nationwide ban on handheld cell use for truck drivers behind the wheel. I happened to speak with Overdrive 2010 Tucker of the Year Mike Crawford (pictured) last week Tuesday, the day the ban went into effect, and he made note of the I-10/610 junction in Houston as particularly hot that day: “They have a bunch of Houston police officers set up on I-10,” he said on that day. “There’s a guy up there with binoculars watching the trucks on 610 and pulling them right and left.” What have you seen in the past week on that score?

(And by the way — congrats to Crawford on his first-place finish in the Overdrive trucking-dog story contest, for his tale about Fred, whom we wrote about on the occasion of her passing last year here. Check out the full contest results here.)

Heads up, and stay safe out there.

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