I'm lucky to be here

That's right folks. I'm a very lucky person. I almost met my maker on Tue. at work.

Let me set the scene for you. We are on a 2 lane rural highway. (That's one lane each direction.) This highway is notorious for head on collisions as there are a lot of hills that limit visibility. On one stretch of this highway there is a passing lane for t traffic. So in this location there is one lane going east bound, and 2 going west. On the west bound side there is a steep dropoff on the shoulder. On the east bound side there is a 8 foot dirt shoulder and then a hill that inclines about 4 feet to a fence with cattle beyond it.

I am in a barrier truck (a 4 yard dump truck with a crash cushion on the back to absorb the impact of a rear end collision. Placed behind workers on foot to protect them.) on the east bound shoulder. My truck is being a bearier for 5 people on the ground including myself. We are drilling down in the soil to take core samples for the possibilities of widening the highway. We are at this location for a little over an hour during commute traffic. After we have taken our samples we relocate to a different location to the west of us a few miles.

Fast forward to the end of the day. (this is about 8.5 hours later) I'm on my way back to the yard to go home. My boss passes me on his way home and calls me on the radio. He tells me to look at the location where we were working in the morning. As I drive by I see tire marks on the road and two farm hands repairing a sectrion of fence in the location we were woking on the ground. Apparently a car was traveling in the west bound far right lane. He was traveling at a very high rate of speed trying to pass a big rig in the passing lane. In front of him just over the crest of the hill was a slow moving vehicle in the lane he was in. So he slammed on the brakes, lost control and left skid marks going across all 3 lanes of traffic, going right over our footprints where we were standing. Then the vehicle went threw the fence into the pasture. If that had happened 15 minutes earlier or if we had taken a little longer in changing locations all five of us would have been hit and most likely killed 2-3 of us. You see my barrier truck was supposed to protect us from a car that would possibly hit us from the rear. This car was coming from our front. We had no protection from that direction.

Needless to say I am very lucky to be here. Just another close call to chalk up to earning a buck.