I just saw something unusual.

I was driving down the southeast expressway from Boston. Just after the 128/3 split, an old Chevy station wagon 'forgot' to take the left hand bend and basically kept going straight, all the way from the left hand lane across 2 lanes and into the right hand barrier at about 50mph.

This is happening literally 20 yards ahead of me, so I stamp on my brakes and hit the flashers, thinking that this Chevy is going to be a real mess Real Soon Now (tm).

The car impacts at the front right corner and bounces out. As it bounces, it's spun so that the rear right corner gets a slice of the barrier action too. To my amazement, the second impact leaves the car facing the right way, and the driver regains control and pulls over.
So I pull over to check that everyone is ok. Fortunately no-one appears to be injured. The middle aged female driver was like, "I don't know what happened there...I lost control...I don't know why", while making gestures that seem to indicate that perhaps she had been trying to get something out of her purse from the passenger footwell at the time. She doesn't look really shocked or worried - her demeanour is as if she's just reversed into a concrete pillar in a car park.

So we check out the damage. Given the speed of the impact I was amazed - most of the side of the car was untouched. There's a crunch in both bumpers and a rear light is out. Front wheel is badly scuffed and the tire has a chunk out the sidewall. I'm thinking that the tire needs replacing pronto, and that the alignment probably needs checking. She's wondering whether it's safe to drive back to the North Shore as is. (~30 miles).

Crazy. I just wanted to bitch slap and shout at her. She had no understanding of just how lucky she was. She could have easily been spun into the path of a big truck.

Oh well. There's no educating some people I guess.

Probably shock. She'll realise sometime tomorrow how close she came to death.

I love Boston. Heck, Massachusetts in general. Ever drive over a queen sized blanket at 80mph? This kind of thing happens around here all the time.

No, but I did have the option on the 'pike a few weeks ago. Actually, I think it was a futon matress. The presence of the rest of the futon in the fast lane was a bit of a giveaway

In the uk we have a problem with single shoes living in the central reservation no one knows why or where they come from but they are on every motorway

But in the US don't they have problems with pairs of shoes hanging by their laces from telegraph poles?

Despite how backwards you think we are, telegraphs were pretty much phased out at least three years ago.

But yes, there is a rash of pairs of shoes tied together by the laces looped over power and communications lines. Has been since the seventies, at least. No one seems to have any idea how or why it started. There is an urban legend that it was a way gangs marked their territories, but I don't think that there's a scrap of truth to that. Of course, it now seems to be awfully prevalent around fraternity houses and college campuses in general.

I've also seen, in recent years, an increasing number of old computer mice wrapped about overhead lines in much the same manner.

My understanding was that the shoes marked a drug dealer's location. As to the one shoe on the highway thing, in rural areas people often put old shoes on top of fenceposts for 2 reasons, they protect the cap of the post from rain, and the (human) smell is supposed to frighten coyotes. There is no science backing this up, of course, just hear-say.

Driving down 128 yesterday I saw the perfect bumper sticker for Mass - "I break for hallucinations!"

Oh how true it is.

In reply to:

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Despite how backwards you think we are, telegraphs were pretty much phased out at least three years ago.

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Sorry, I mean't to say telephone poles...

I grew up in NYC in the late seventies/eighties, and I remember seeing shoes on the wires all the time. At one point my dad who was born and raised in Brooklyn explained it to me.
Apparently when school got out for the summer, the routine was to take your gym shoes, which were usually beat by then, and fling them up onto the wires. Sort of a mini celebration. Probably akin to throwing your mortarboard after graduation.
Sort of...
When I was of gym class age, (early eighties) this must've been on its way out, 'cause I dont remember me or any of my friends doing it.
By that point we didnt really have specific "gym shoes" though. Everybody was pretty much wearing sneakers all the time. (the post Converse All-Star age of Reebok/Nike)
Anyway, that was my take on the phenomenon.

Sorry, I mean't to say telephone poles...

But I think the poles are still commonly called telegraph poles in the UK, even though they're no longer used for telegraphy as such. It's a bit like "dialling" a number, or a phone "ringing" -- the language has taken hold of it now and it's got its own destiny separate from the technology it originally named.

Peter

I saw a good bumper sticker the other day.

" Too Fast for Fear "

I've seen the shoes wrapped over power lines in the middle of Lake Travis and Lake Austin before...