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An account from one of the riders stated he went over the double yellow line and then jerked back the wheel causing the trailer to jackknife.

I doubt it was intentional. More likely he was distracted for some reason. Route 2 is a pretty wide open east/west road. Plenty of room to hit 55-65 mph. All it takes is a second to travel a few hundred feet. IF he looked down to check his phone, play with the radio, dropped his cigarette, etc, etc. It is most likely just a horrible accident that he will pay for, for the rest of his life.

I live in southern NH. A few years back a 60 something year old man went out to get his mail and newspaper at the end of his driveway in Amherst, NH. He had lived in this house for 30+ years. It was the day before Christmas. He was hit by a 20 year old young man on the way home that lived in the next town. The older man was killed. Dead on the snowbank on the side of the road right next to his mailbox. The young man had been texting.

I doubt it was intentional.

Most likely a cell phone/texting issue.

It is madness.

My wife and I were driving south on 495 in Massachusetts yesterday just north of the Lowell Connector at about 11:00 AM.

I was in the left hand lane doing about 75 mph in heavy traffic with a lot of tractor trailers. (The speed limit is 65 MPH IIRc, but nobody does it through there when there isn’t bumper to bumper traffic...doing 65 is actually unsafe)

When there are a lot of tractor trailers, I prefer to drive in the left hand lane because they aren’t allowed in the left lane in Massachusets.

When I have to pass a truck in the lane to the right of the left lane, I watch and wait until there is enough room behind the car in front of me to clear the truck, then I accellerate and pass the truck, watching the front wheels of the truck carefully for any indication it might come into our lane. While I am doing this, I also hover my hand over the horn...just in case.

Habit.

As we passed, we were about half way past the truck when the front of the truck began to cross the line and came about two feet into my lane and kept coming. There is no real breakdown lane on the left there, probably about 1/3 the width of a normal breakdown lane with a rumble strip to the left of the white road stripe with jersey barriers just a few feet to the left of that rumble strip.

No place to go.

I jerked the car over as far as I could, jacked on the brakes, went over the rumble strip as my side mirror was less than a foot from the Jersey Barriers, my hand came down firmly on the horn and stayed there as my wife shrieked at the top of her lungs “OH MY GOD!”

The truck jerked back into its own lane, and we drove the rest of the way home with my white-knuckled wife clutching the door and the seat.

I don’t know why that truck came over, but...could have been sleepy. Could have been texting. Could have been doing some paper notation or map adjustment, I don’t know.

But that is all it takes on the road these days, is a second or two to become a grease spot on a jersey barrier because someone took their eyes off the road.

That’s all it takes. And for an inexperienced driver towing a trailer...even less.

It is damned dangerous on the roads these days. Damned dangerous.