CARLISLE, AR - - Sometimes you find yourself just along for the ride. Let me explain. I was driving as we were heading West on I-40 in Tennessee. There had been some sporadic light rain. Two vehicles merged from an entrance ramp. Neither was rolling fast enough and soon .had some traffic built up behind ... including us. One vehicle, a white work van, finally pulled over. And as we passed, it was easy to see the driver (a middle-aged individual) engrossed in his cell phone which he had in one hand resting on the steering wheel. Not a good idea.
A short way down the road, traffic slowed dramatically. I was watching my mirrors closely monitoring traffic behind. Luckily, the van driver - - who was in the other lane - - decided to look up at the traffic to see how it was moving. It wasn't. (I was stopped so I kept my eyes glued to the mirror.)
The van driver panic-braked so hard there were large plumes of smoke from the tires and it looked like the rear wheels lifted off the road. A very hard right turn took the van to the shoulder of the road and the slight ditch beside it. The driver appeared to try a hard a hard left to save himself (and take out the traffic he had just missed). The front end slid a bit; momentum took over and the van rolled over a few times down the edge before coming to a stop. A couple of vehicles stopped to help.
A couple of miles down the road we saw an ambulance headed toward the wreck.
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