Yesterday I had to go into work for a few hours, then swung by Canine Assistants to pick up a dog for a home visit this weekend.
As I'm driving home on GA-400 (the GA equivalent of the German Autobahn), the sky lets loose a torrential rain. The type of rain where the cars ahead appear as shadows.
All of the sudden, ahead of me I see this shadow of a truck look like it was weaving in and out of traffic, and I realize that it's hydroplaning and fishtailing across four lanes of highway and I immediately start slowing down, because he's not THAT far ahead of me (and I'm already going 15 miles below the speed limit because of the rain) and then I see him just crash head first into the middle barrier (which is taller than I am). Flipped the truck back around so that the nose of the truck is facing back into the traffic across the far left lane.
I immediately throw in my hazards and start breaking so that I can stop to make sure that he's ok. Planned to pull the car into the lane that his truck was now blocking, but in front of him, at a safe distance in front so that if any other drivers saw it too late to stop, I wouldn't be hurt.
As I get right to the front of his truck, he throws the door open and is yanking his cell phone out of his pocket to call 911. I asked him if he was ok and if he'd like me to stay with him while help arrived. He assured me that he was physically fine and that I didn't need to stay with him.
I was very relieved that he was ok enough to get out of that truck, the crash was violent enough for me to let out a few expletives when it happened. Luckily, no other cars were involved, though I'm not quite sure whether or not a car had cut him off prior to the accident to cause it or not, since visibility was so poor.
He's very "lucky" that his truck hit the middle median and didn't go off to the right - because the accident happened on a bridge that goes over another six lanes of traffic. Had he gone off to the right, and if the impact would have flipped the truck up, he would have gone up and over the bridge.
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