Teen or old fogey or anything in between; anyone using a phone while driving needs a Rodney King style beat down, a sentence of ‘attempted murder’, a fine enough to cover any hospital bill ever printed out, and to never be behind the wheel of anything again. No mercy, no excuses, no extenuating circumstances nor any appeal. I don’t care if they are 16 or 106.
Just rear-ended on the freeway going 62mph a quarter to half mile from the highway exit ramp. Had changed lanes 4+ seconds earlier and nobody within 200 yrds Over 10 car lengths min.
I look back 1 sec after changing lanes and see a guy back in the group way back there.
I look forward to make sure I’m in the correct exit lane. I look back 2 sec after original lane change and now he’s closed the distance by a third, so I realize he’s speeding, so I look forward to make sure nobody is around me and look back, 3 sec after original lane change. Now he’s closed 2/3 the distance from the pack from when I originally saw him, but now he’s 2 ft over into the right exit lane looking like he’s going to pass me on the right. So I figure he’s going to pass me at 90+ on the right, so we stay in our lane, foot off the break less than a half mile to the interchange, and I watch him come back into our lane, ...I wonder if he’s going to brake in time or pass on the left, but no he keeps coming and I’m trying to gauge how much he is slowing down, but then realize he is going to hit us and watch realizing he wasn’t even braking before he hit us. I watch his front hood buckle upwards on his white Maxima and his radiator explode as we are thrust forward from 62 to 70 and he is still following on us and then he slowly descends back from us drifting to the right shoulder (because his car wouldn’t run anymore).
Luckily we were in a pickup and he was in a light car, and we didn’t get spunout at 62mph.
He had to be doing over 90 and possibly pushing 140, I suspect min of 110 mph. Cops said our stories were consistent, ours was drivable, his was totaled. Police report just said was driving at a speed in excess of what he could control and got a ticket for reckless driving.
Our rear bumper was shoved in 2 inches and most of the undercarriage brackets were sheared out by 2/3. All the other vehicle seams were true, though the right tail-light lens was cracked. Of course, his buckled front hood had left paint all the way to the top on our tail gate.
CHP let us go with the insurance info and on the way home, we get off the freeway, stop at an intersection red light, light changes, we’re still a little numb from the highway rear-ender, start out maybe 1-2 sec after the light changed, when a SUV speeds through the intersection running the light doing about 50mph right in front of us from right to left.
Had we started up when the light had changed, he would have T-boned us at about 50mph.
Here’s the spooky thing. I tell a guy at work and he had nearly the same experience 100 miles away, except in his case the guy didn’t rear-end him, instead he veered from oncoming traffic, crossed into their lanes, he swerved and the guy oncoming passed him and swerved between him and the cars behind them, missing all of them, then jumping the curb into the desert screwing up his front end. 30 miles later he also was at a stop light, slow to start and a guy sped through the red light missing the T-bone closely.
People texting while driving makes me crazy when I see it.