Blind Corner Plus Fallen Tree Equals Huge Semi Near-Miss Plus Wet Pants

Sure, if you hear somebody yell "timbeeeerrr," you'd do well to do a quick 360 degrees check and side-strafe out of the way of the falling tree, but when you're a lumberjack, this comes with the territory. When driving your car, on the other hand, the trees are just some vertical things on the side of the road that occasionally become a nuisance by casting shadows on the asphalt, dazzling your eyes with the contrasting alternation of bright and dark zones.

But as long as they remain vertical, they're not really a hazard unless you end up involuntarily off-roading in a bend - but in that case, you can't really blame the poor tree for hitting you, can you? There are those rare instances when, for various reasons (a storm with heavy winds or a chainsaw with sharp teeth), a tree trunk ends up on the road, blocking it like some sort of barrier.

Add some dense vegetation very close to the road's edge and a strategically placed bend and you've got yourself the recipe for a disaster. This is precisely the image this truck driver comes across. He sees a damaged black Volkswagen Jetta (90% sure) pulled over, a woman looking helplessly at it, a tree trunk some 70 feet away with a peeled zone about the width of a Volkswagen Jetta, and some skid marks. It takes him approximately 0.1 seconds to realize what happened, so he pulls over to see if there's anything he can do to help.

The two begin to chat, and the woman tells the brief story of what happened: "I came around the corner and just went straight over it," she says slightly exuberant, as if this was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a while. Well, if that were the case, she was in for a treat because her day was about to get even more exciting. A little too exciting, actually.

Out of nowhere, a white semi comes charging down towards the fallen tree its driver clearly could not see. Apart from the trunk, there is now a secondary roadblock made up of the two stopped vehicles, so he slams the brakes as hard as he can. The trailer goes sideways, threatening to hit the camera-equipped truck flush in the face. He miraculously gets away with it, but the passenger car wasn't as lucky - we can't see anything, but the sound makes it very clear that, at best, the Jetta was turned into a Golf.

Like all stories involving accidents, there is something to be learned here. If you have to stop your car on the road for whatever reason, take out the hazard triangle and install it where you think it would be most useful. In this case, back to where the bend started.