Since late December '17, when I sent the pages of THE CARELESS DRIVER off to the printer, I have witnessed 11 collisions in just my area where I live in Tennessee and two individuals have within one month's time related stories of how they totaled their car and another’s, and the second how a tractor-trailer moved into his lane and shredded his front driver side tire. Here also is a transcribed conversation which will appear in a future revised edition of TCD.
In the preface to TCD I mention the fact of some drivers who irritate, annoy and scare us. This is a story by two persons in my company of a madman or a man gone temporarily mad while driving on one of our TN Interstates:
My name is Casey M. and my name is Katrina _____, we’re both from Des Moines, Iowa, first time down in Nashville. Couple of things brought us down here we are going to the show to check out artists at the Ryman (Auditorium). I’m also a big Jack White fan. We’ll check out Third Band Records....We hopped on—we drove through Broadway and checked out The Gooring Bros. the haberdashery. We stopped there and then hopped on the Interstate to head back to our air B&B, during rush-hour traffic. We’re on the 40 going west, a black pickup truck jackknifed itself between us and the car in front of us. (Katrina) Yes, he literally cut us off! (Casey) I was leaving half a car length on the Interstate. It wasn’t gridlock but it was at a crawl. Jackknifed, put himself in front of us. Then he leans his head out the window and looks back at us very steely eyed. Kinda gives us the hook. (Katrina) I waved my hand like this: what the fuck? (Casey) He puts his head back in the car, starts reaching and digging through his passenger side and under his seat. Pulls out a pistol, a large hand-gun, points in the back window, as if to show us, “Hey I have this pistol.” Then stays in front us for a little bit and cuts across to the next lane, the far left. We get in the far right. He pulls down his window. There was a car-length between us. Keeps looking back for us, looking back for us Thankfully there was a semi in one of the two lanes between us. We drove as slow as we possibly could next to the semi because we were scared he would open fire on our vehicle. He had stopped in the fast lane about ten to twelve car-lengths back looking for us. This happened two hours ago.