Just overheard on the TV news that the freeway was shut down, both directions, due to some stupid shit-for-brains asshat TRYING TO USE THE DAMN MEDIAN TO PASS A SEMI!!! The Einstein wannabe died (surprise, surprise) in what has to be further proof of survival of the fittest. And speaking of stupidity, I normally hate to second-guess the police but the cops here shut down the freeway for hours every time there’s a fender-bender! Don’t they have anything better to do? :wally
Explain to the foreign and/or stupid what a Median and a Semi is.
Sorry…
the median is the center dividing strip on a freeway or multi-lane road. Sometimes it’s concrete or a barrier-type divider, and other times (like in this case) it’s grass or dirt. “Semi” is American slang for a tractor-trailer truck.
I’ll chip in here.
Median: The strip of grass that separates the two sides of a divided highway. These often include concrete barriers.
Semi: Also called a tractor-trailer. A big cargo truck. (Is that a lorry in the UK?)
I’m taking a class in dialects right now, these little intricacies of the language never cease to amaze me.
Seriously? A freeway is a limited-access road, similar to the autobahn in Germany, and the median is the large unpaved area in the middle, between the this-a-way traffic and the that-a-way traffic.
A “semi” is a semi-trailer rig; an enormous trailer with no wheels in front (thus “semi”), hauled by a tractor with extra wheels in the back (to support the front of the trailer). AKA an “eighteen-wheeler.”
Basically, what probably happened is that an impatient driver tried to pass a truck by pulling off the road; he lost control, got himself killed, and probably scattered bits of himself, his car, and several other cars all over the road.
I really should use preview. Sorry for the simulpost.
semi = articulated lorry (hope I got that right, it’s been quite a few years)