James Mosqueda, freeway destroyer

Thank you very fucking much, Jimbo, for driving your full gasoline tanker too fast in a 50 MPH zone early this morning.

Thank you for crashing into the guard rail, flipping over and spilling 8,600 gallons of gas. (Oh, by the way, thanks for destroying $30,000 worth of gasoline.)

While you staggered out of your wrecked truck and hailed a taxi to go to the hospital, part of the ever-congested complicated convergence of highways called the Macarthur Maze melted and collapsed.

Do you have any idea how many months it will take to remove the buckled overpasses and ramps and rebuild them? The official word as of 40 minutes ago is “indefinitely.” Did you ever realize the 80,000 vehicles a day that travel that road are now going to have to find another way from Point A to Point B? For how many months?

The only good thing in all of this is that you were apparently alone on the road at that moment and didn’t harm any innocent people.

That is unbelievable.

  1. Remind me to avoid I-880 if I ever go to California. That highway doesn’t seem to hold up well under stress.

  2. This should put a dent in the Loose Change crowd’s argument that structural steel can’t melt due to a gas fire.

  3. I’m sorry you’re going to have to take a little more time getting where you’re going. But accidents happen. This guy is in screaming pain right now for his mistake. You just lost a few minutes. Get some perspective.

How long till we hear that it was probably a setup to discredit the theorists, and that “they” had planted explosives beforehand and orchestrated the crash?

“Who gets in a crash with a 30,000 gallon gas tanker truck and escapes with second degree burns?” they will say.

One person traveling through there for the first time in their life will lose a few minutes. News reports say the driver is doing OK and will be out of the hospital in two or three days.

250,000 people a day going through there multiplied by “a few minutes” multiplied by indefinitely comes to a whole lot of time lost, late dinners, missed flights, whatever. Bay Area traffic is hairy in the best of times. Now, it will be much worse. On the evening news, they said the detour on surface streets takes 30 minutes longer in Sunday afternoon-light traffic. No predictions yet as to how bad it will be at 5:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Will we all survive? Sure. But we’ll have all lost hours, if not days of time each, and burned countless more gallons of gas, putting that much more pollution into the air while creeping through city streets that weren’t intended to handle that many vehicles a day. All because one guy was running late or simply wasn’t paying attention.

Holy crap! Well, this is definitely going to put a damper on my commute.

I didn’t even know this happened, until I saw this thread. That’s what I get for not watching TV today, I suppose. :eek:
LilShieste

While I’m certainly not happy that this guy is in pain right now, I think I should point out that this accident might be one that very well could have been avoided. He was apparently going faster than the speed limit (50mph) when he was approaching the onramp. I even slow my little Prius down a bit when I get on that ramp.
LilShieste

There’s no use crying over spilled… well, gas. What’s done is done.

I’m not crying; just irritated. :wink:
LilShieste

His name is an amalgam of mosque and queda? Clearly this is the work of terrorists.

You, of course, always drive exactly the speed limit even on an empty highway at 6 AM. :rolleyes:

If you’re hauling 8,600 gallons of gasoline, I would hope you’d be a little more cautious than usual. If that means obeying the speed limit on an empty stretch of highway, so be it.
LilShieste

If I’m hauling thirty thousand dollars worth of flammable material, you bet yer ass I do.

At least he didn’t kill anyone.

Has Rosie O’Donnell explained yet how this is impossible?

You can add me to the list of comments on this. I may speed in my Toyota Corolla but I had the cargo van today for work and you bet your ass I was going exactly the speed limit, if not slower, and braking early.

This is an idiotic comment to make.

If the driver is found to be negligent, can the state charge his employer for the cost of the repairs?

Wow. The freeway “melted”. I’m glad I live on the other side of the bay!

And according to the news reports I’ve read, we don’t know that the guy was speeding. Let’s just thank the gods it didn’t happen during commute hours.

Well, according to the article linked by the OP:

Now, when this CHP guy said “too fast,” i don’t know if he meant “legally too fast” or simply “too fast to be safe in a large tanker.” The fact that the speed limit was actually mentioned leads me to suspect both.

Looks like BART might be more popular now. Here’s what their site says:

“BART rides will be free and BART will run longer trains all day Monday, April 30, adding cars to increase passenger capacity. BART will also add trains during commute hours to help mitigate the effect of the MacArthur Maze collapse.”