I was driving home on the freeway with Sara – having an intriguing conversation about God, of all topics – and out of the blue, I almost hit somebody running across the three lane, 60-mph road.
I think it was a worker with the State – he ran over to one of those flashing signs that they use to move people over during lane closures, and I didn’t even see his truck until I was right up alongside it in the left-most lane. It was very dark – maybe around 9:30pm – and traffic was still pretty heavy.
I remember about a year ago, there was a story in the paper about a road worker getting killed in the middle of the night when he was trying to move one of those kinds of signs and got hit by a drunk driver at 3:00am. For the longest time I thought the story was deplorable and couldn’t imagine what it’d be like for this guy’s family – he was young and I think just had a baby, it said – to deal with such a loss when the guy was just doing his job.
After tonight’s incident, though, now I can’t help but wonder … what if the road worker was being an idiot when he got hit???
I’m certainly not excusing the drunk driving by any stretch of the imagination, but comparing the unknown to my situation – some guy decided to run across three lanes of heavy traffic traveling at 60mph. If I would’ve hit him, would it have been deemed an accident or would I have gone to jail over it? Sure, it was a construction zone, hence the reduced speeds, but doesn’t that also still elicit a little common sense from the guy doing the work? I mean, we teach look both ways before you cross the street to kindergartners…
As our conversation continued, all I could think about was how my life could’ve been potentially ruined by some other guy’s poor judgement, and sure, technically we’re subject to that on varying levels all of the time throughout the day, but still … if I had been driving just a little faster or he had slipped or something, I probably would’ve taken his life with my car.
If there is a God, he’s sure got a sick sense of humor towards us non-believers… 😯