Now THIS is a driving rant.

The BBQ Pit
1

We were on our way home today from a little town south of here and were cruising down the highway at the speed limit of 110kmh. There’s a few cars going by us (as hardly anyone obeys the speed limit) but since I’m rarely in a hurry and was enjoying the drive with the family this doesn’t bother me. My 3 year old daughter is playing the “I love you more than…” game and Lola is manning the radio while the other kids are kicking back and talking.

Now this is a four lane divided highway and we were heading north while a few hundred yards away there’s a fair amount of traffic headed south on the other two southbound lanes.

Imagine my shock when I see a blue Dodge truck headed north at a phenomenal rate of speed in the southbound lane. This truck must have been doing 160 as he passed by us like we were parked and I figure this guy is going to cause one hell of an accident if he doesn’t figure out he’s in the wrong lane.

Almost immediately a police cruiser comes screaming along, also headed north in the southbound lane in pursuit of the Dodge which is now avoiding oncoming cars and kicking up snow from the shoulder. Thankfully, the Dodge misses the oncoming traffic and both the truck and the police cruiser disappear into the distance. I realize then that the Dodge driver is trying to escape the police and has taken to the wrong lane in an effort to throw them off.

We keep driving and are talking about what just happened and a few minutes later we come around a corner to see the Dodge coming straight… towards… us.

I hit the brakes and pulled the van over to the shoulder and the Dodge goes blasting by us after dodging a van that was travelling ahead of us… I can see the driver clearly enough to see that he has short blonde hair and he is soon followed by the police cruiser which is now also heading south in the northbound lane.

After a minute we get going again and continue our drive home thinking that this surely wasn’t our typical afternoon drive. Lola and I are holding hands and the kids were really quiet realizing that we’re not in the mood to talk. It’s maybe 5 minutes later when I check the rear view mirror to see the Dodge coming up behind us with several police cruisers in pursuit… again I take to the shoulder as the Dodge speeds by with the police following closely behind.

A few minutes after this we see a multitude of flashing lights up ahead and as we draw closer I see that there are also police cruisers parked in the southbound lane blocking traffic. The dodge is in the ditch, buried in a drift and the driver is running across the snow towards the southbound lane with at least six officers behind him.

I’m wondering where the fuck this guy thinks he’s going… we’re in the middle of nowhere and there are police cars and officers coming from everywhere.

This fucknugget, bless his dark little soul… hit the pavement on the other side and decided to put up a fight. The six cops stapled his sorry ass to that frozen pavement with what appeared to be extreme prejudice before trussing him up and carrying him to a police cruiser.

Now… I’m simply happy to be here getting all this out of my system and hoping that this guy gets the maximum punishment allowable under the law. I hope no-one was hurt except this reckless fuck…

It’s nice to be home with everyone tucked safely into their beds.

2

Wow. What an experience.

I want to know what happens to this guy, too. If you follow it on the news, please keep us posted.

3

ACK!

I’m glad you, Lola and the kids made it home ok.

(Retroactive abortions apply here.)

4

See, this is an instance where you, the Action Hero, should have dived out of your car and onto the hood of his the second you first saw him screaming towards you. You would have then pulled out your MP-5 - because all good action stars have at least five of those attached to their body at any given time - and emptied a clip into the driver. You would have then hung off the driver’s side mirror and pulled on the wheel sharply to make the whole vehicle flip over, thus ending the chase.

You, of course, would have emerged unharmed except for the standard superficial cut on either your eyebrow or your chin (or both, for those REALLY gritty action heroes), held up your gun, and quipped some funny one-liner before going back to your family as dramatic, end-of-an-action-movie music played in the background.

And then you would’ve come back for seven sequels, each progressively getting worse as your paycheck gets progressively larger.

5

Spoofe - The real Action Heroes were the R.C.M.P. officers who put themselves at risk to get this asshole off the road.

I think that the police were trying to set up a roadblock when the guy in the truck went through them and put his truck into the ditch. Perhaps the police had something to do with his truck going off the road and there was some damage to the right side of the truck that may have been caused by a collision with a cruiser.

Venoma… thanks!

Hopefully, I’ll know more about it tomorow as a story like this should hit the news.

6

Glad no-one was hurt (except, perhaps, the asshole in question).

Feynn, what part of Canada are you in?

I’ll keep an eye out for this story on World’s Wildest Police Videos. :slight_smile:

7

blinks Wow. That would have been freaky to have seen the guy coming at you like that.

I’m glad you, Lola and the kids are all okay.

I wasn’t watching the news last night but I’ll bet it was on there somewhere.

8

Two things:

I enjoyed the way you switched from one measurement system to another.

Best prose I’ve read in quite some time. Bravo!

9

Some people are just too stupid to benefit from rehabilitative imprisonment. If his only crime was his creative driving, I can’t see the economic value in court proceedings. Had the cops just spent an hour beating him senseless, I’d consider justice well served.

10

Good to hear that you and yours were not struck.

11

Bryan, Bryan…the cops didn’t have to beat that moron driver senseless! He/it/whatever was senseless before the cops arrived.

12

*I hit the brakes and pulled the van over to the shoulder and the Dodge goes blasting by us after dodging a van that was travelling ahead of us… *

What Feynn doesn’t mention is at this time, he drove for several seconds (what seemed like years!) straight at us. That was pretty scary.

I didn’t see anything about a high speed chase in the newspaper today. I’ll check again tomorrow. I’d sure like to know what it was all about.

13

Oh, man, that really sucks. This was on the #2 highway heading into Edmonton, right? If the highway close to Edmonton is anything like the same highway close to Calgary, I can’t think of a worse place for a high-speed chase. It is a goldarned miracle no one was hurt.

(Oh, just for the record, Monty, Canadians switch back and forth between metric and imperial all the time. We don’t even notice when we do it.)

14

I spoke to a city cop I know and nothing about this chase had hit his desk… mind you, they don’t always share information with the R.C.M.P.

He figures the guy probably got a face full of pepper spray before he was taken down and then another dose for good measure.

He’s pretty sure this guy didn’t get 5 star treatment on his way to jail either.

:smiley:

15

featherlou - We were just north of the Bear Hills rest stop by Hobbema when the adventure started… it was a fucking miracle that no-one was seriously injured or killed.

For anyone who doesn’t know, our highway 2 is the 4th busiest traffic corridor in North America. I think that because the weather on Saturday wasn’t that great there were fewer vehicles on the road than usual. I took the same trip a few weeks ago when the weather was nice and the traffic was double what it was yesterday.

The guy in the truck did dodge some oncoming vehicles right after he went by us so I think we came pretty close to witnessing some horrendous carnage.

The police did a good job of shutting down the highway so no other cars could enter the chase zone.

Again… kudos to them.

16

Driving around town for an hour or so today we had the usual six or seven close calls, but man, nothing like that! Congrats on not being a victim of that loony’s behaviour.