I was driving home from my parents’ place on Tuesday evening when I could see the lights from at least one police car from several blocks away. Was it an accident, road block, or a DUI check?
When I got to the intersection, it was something a little more unique. This particular area of the municipality has been plagued by closed roads due to construction. The local hospital is expanding and as such, it apparently required a new sewer line to be installed. The roads around the hospital have been closed for months, requiring traffic to be detoured around, sometimes inconveniently. In my case, it adds about ten minutes to my drive to my parents’ home.
Now, when I got to the intersection where the police were, I need to take a right-hand turn. Unfortunately, that was not possible as it was all blocked off. I could see a semi-trailer truck had already attempted to make the right-hand turn and failed in a spectacular way. Whoever was the driver took the turn way too tightly and the trailer mounted the sidewalk and was rubbing up against the traffic light pole. I guess the driver got stuck at this point and couldn’t move forward or backwards. If there was one thing they did right was that they didn’t make it worse once they got themselves into this jam.
That turn is pretty tight though and it doesn’t require a veteran trucker to know a trailer that long wouldn’t be able to make it. The road I was on has a left-hand turn lane, a through lane and a right-hand turn lane. Just by looking at the length of that trailer, I’d say the driver would have needed to make the right turn from the left-hand turn lane to have enough clearance for the trailer. How they thought it was going to be possible from the right-hand turn lane is a mystery to me.
This new detour on top of the regularly closed roads made me alter my route home unexpectedly but it wasn’t that bad. I don’t envy truck drivers. It’s a thankless job with a lot of negatives without a lot of positives that outweigh them. I wonder how they were able to get this trailer out of this mess.