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Have you been forced off the road?
The other day I was coming home from ETLC on typical winding Tennessee/North Carolina mountain roads. I was on a 25 mph curve when here comes a guy flying around the curve in a pick em up truck and a third of the way over the line. I either hit him or go off the road on the right and chose going off the road.
I was lucky because I was going slow and the drop was only about 12 to 18 inches. I was able to keep control and slowly come back on the road, just missing a sign pole. As you can imagine on a two lane mountain road there was nowhere to pull over and look at the damage. I was also lucky I didn’t have a toad!
A couple miles later I was able to pull over and didn’t notice any serious damage thank God. I had a couple scratches on the underside of two bay doors and a bunch of red mud that was kicked up but that was all.
I’m going over today to take a better look at the tires to make sure the tire pressure is up and look for slices and/or tares. Going off the road in a bus is a bad feeling that much I can tell you. And when I think of the many places that going off the road would be horrific I feel many times blessed!
Harry
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12 Replies
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That’s why you should have a dash cam Harry…
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I do Tom!
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Harry,
In some locations where the road is a little winding as you described, on the tighter blind curves, some drivers will honk the horn with a couple short beeps just prior to entering the blind portion of the curve. Sometimes an over abundance of caution is warranted. Just saying.
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Right you are Tim, high mountain roads is a place for an abundance of caution for sure. I don’t know that using the horn would have helped in this circumstance, the guy was going too fast for the curve.
I’m happy to say after a good look at the bus today that all is well. The tire pressure is what they’re supposed to be in all tires and could not find any cuts or tares. The side damage to the bay doors is minimal so all in all I feel quite fortunate.
Harry
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Good to hear!
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While this may or may not have worked in your situation, when leaving Mountain Falls last year, I took a piece of advice and had my tow car lead me down the mountain. This way, the driver could communicate via a cell speakerphone when a switchback was clear.
The only problem was that her phone kept dropping the call. So, this year, I’ll be installing a CB in the Jeep for my Summer adventure.
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The road to our house is considered a challenge for the bus by some. We do not have the advantage of shoulders or any place to go to avoid oncoming traffic. In addition there are several spots where enthusiastic drivers (assholes) like to use their lane and mine.
Everyone’s normal reaction when confronted by oncoming traffic is to move over. I cannot and those who have visited the house understand clearly there is no viable way to avoid the problem. In almost the entire road my driver’s wheels are just touching the double yellow line while the passenger side wheels are on the white line that is also the edge of some deep drop offs.
Cars speeding at me in my lane so far have seen the bus, even when not expected and managed to get back in their lane and pass without contact. The biggest problem is large trucks or even worse, school buses coming from the opposite direction. They are rarely speeding but the road does not allow our mirrors to pass so I have “educated” the more aggressive drivers who seem convinced they can maintain speed and make it past each other. I literally step over into their lane to indicate they are going to stop or at least slow down a whole lot so we each can do the needed wiggle to get our mirrors by one another and pass each other without either of us dropping off the edge or scraping our mirror down the other’s side. I decided to do that despite how it might piss off other drivers because a school bus passed a stopped truck at my driveway so fast she knocked the truck mirror off with her mirror, and despite that she never slowed down or stopped.
Curves, especially the tight ones are an issue and I have two that are so tight that despite keeping my front wheels as far to one side as possible, my rear wheels take an inside track to the point where my back of the bus is at least 3 feet in the other lane. Driving on public roads that are like that require a decision very early that you can risk dropping off the road and perhaps losing the bus, or staying firmly planted in your lane and maybe the other lane and risk a collision.
If you had rolled the bus over Harry you can bet the other driver would have been long gone and you could have been injured badly.
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You’ve been known for good sound advice Jon, and I include this to the sound advice column of the ledger. I can’t help but think how poorly my saga could have ended with just a little greater drop off or it being less firm. You say “stay on the road” and I agree that’s the answer.
Hi Andy, I can see the advantage of a lead car but in these tight mountain roads I’m not sure how good that would be. Plus I can hear my wife now “Hey, I thought you said you bought the bus so we could be together”!
Harry
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in your lane is the best solution.
We have been in a couple of “interesting” situations which could have had a bad ending. Such as, rolling the bus or creating a major highway incident.
We have had … people on on-ramps not paying any attention but trying to enter the Interstate. Only to find out there was a solid wall of a bus blocking them from doing so and then ending-up in the green area at the end of the on-ramp. I vividly remember saucer sized eyes …
We have had a pickup not paying much attention on the on-ramp and when I tooted my horns, the driver sped-up, entered the Interstate and then stepped on his brakes, forcing me to do the same.
I wished then that I was driving an old bus and just roll right over that idiot.
I call that “cleaning-up the gene pool”.
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Hey Ronald, RE: “I wished then that I was driving an old bus and just roll right over that idiot. I call that “cleaning-up the gene pool”
Are you saying my old bus is expendable or its driver, Or both?
Harry
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One of the more troubling aspects of driving the coach is traffic merging onto the highway from a ramp. I will liberally use the air horn (short blasts) if it looks like the merging traffic won’t get out ahead of me or is too fast to fall behind me and I can’t move over into the other lane. Only once have I used the air horn, checked up, let a guy in-front of me only to have him dynamite the brakes and slow down to 15mph on a 55mph expressway.
Most of the time the daydreaming drivers slow down and try to fall in behind me, sometimes they’ll accelerate out in front of us and cause no problem.
On our first coach trip to Florida we had a car merging onto the Interstate on a bridge where the merging lane was really short and had semis to the left. I gave a couple of short blasts to the air horn and the car sat just behind the steer tires. She was running out of merge lane and I could see in the mirror she was moving closer to the bus. I went continuous air horn. She stayed right with me and drove onto the shoulder as she disappeared in the blind spot. Then I could see her driving from the shoulder down into the shallow ditch and stopping; the ditch looked awfully rough.
I’ve concluded there is probably little we can do to protect ourselves from oblivious drivers who when faced with an unanticipated situation make one bad decision after another.
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I have put more miles on not only the bus this past year, but my car also to the point where it has been 20 or 30 years since I had that many driving miles.
Dick is absolutely correct in that merging from an on-ramp is beyond the comprehension of some people. They not only seem unwilling to slam the gas pedal to the floor when it would make the merge easy, they also seem to believe someone in the right of way has to move to the left to let them enter the highway.
I have become a world class bastard in that I just do not move over any more, even when I have an open lane next to me. If drivers are so stupid they do not know how to use the gas pedal, the brake pedal or mirrors to merge onto an interstate I’ll be damned if I am going to make their driving easier. Even when I have a weak moment and move over the morons I am helping seem to go out of their way to irritate me, such as getting alongside of me and then matching my speed for miles before deciding to drop back a little or speeding up.
Since I drive the bus slow, I encounter a different idiot when I am in the car. The problem comes from a different perspective. I drive significantly faster in my car so when I am blasting along in the fast lane it has now become common to have the slow lane drivers who are coming up behind someone doing 1 MPH slower than they are going to jump out in front of me, sometimes way to close for comfort. Then that person who is all of a sudden going 8 or ten MPH slower than me and all the folks behind me maintains his cruise control speed and takes miles to clear the slower traffic.
The bottom line is very simple. There are no drivers any more. There are definitely no drivers that demonstrate an awareness of what is going on around them. They do not respect others. And to a great extent they are in their own little world. That includes truckers who now reside in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to courtesy.
It is kind of scary on our roads today because we already have driverless cars.
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