We went to Grady's for dinner tonight. Took I-35. As I was slowing for my exit, I noticed a twin-size mattress blocking the left lane entirely & part of the middle lane as well. Asked my mother to call someone.
She called the city twice, never got an answer. (It's one of those 3-digit helplines that supposedly connect you to a variety of services.) Finally called the SAPD nonemergency number. Apologized to the person who answered and said she tried calling the city but didn't get an answer, so she called SAPD because they were the ones who'd have to deal with any wrecks resulting from it. He thanked her for calling and said he'd get someone out there.
We were in the restaurant 40 minutes or so. Came out and looked over at the freeway...sure enough, the mattress was still there, and a car had wrecked because of it.
Dammit. We called because we were hoping to avoid something like that.
I imagine the dispatcher at the PD had to call Public Works or someone of the sort. I would have thought they'd make debris in the traffic lanes on the freeway a priority. Guess not. The police were arriving to deal with the wreck just as we were getting in the car.
I'm not angry, of course. Just frustrated, and disappointed. Hard when you do the right thing and then exactly what you were hoping to head off happens anyway. Some dolt didn't tie down their mattress well enough, and now a car is wrecked (hopefully not badly) and the police have to block off at least two lanes of a 3-lane freeway to deal with it. Of course there's the question of why the car didn't avoid it. Oddly enough, the mattress was kinda hard to see. The road there is light gray, the mattress was light blue. I'm pretty observant & I didn't see it until we were almost even with it, and I was slowed down to get off the freeway. It's one of those things were someone coming through at 60 probably wouldn't notice it until too late. (And that's if they were even doing the speed limit--most of the traffic tonight was speeding, which actually is not the norm on that stretch of road.)
5 comments:
I once saw a tricked out camero lose all it's ground effects to a box springs that was dropped in the middle of Loop 410.
It seems they just leave the stuff in the road for the cars to demolish..let the chips fall where they may. At least you tried.
And somewhere, there is a pick-up truck owner arriving at the new apartment wondering where the heck the rest of his bed is.
I've had my own issues with the 3-1-1 dispatchers. Some of them are helpful and Johnny on the spot, others, not so much. But when they don't even answer the phone, that is a problem. Yeesh.
Hope everyone was alright.
Why did you not move it yourself?
I didn't move it myself because, unlike the people whose job it is to clear debris, I don't have any way to block off a traffic lane and get it.
Had it been in the right hand lane instead of the left, I may well have waited til it was clear and dragged it off. But I can't safely get a twin-size mattress out of the left lane of the freeway.
Ah yes, that would be a good reason. Although it was at the beginning of your post, I missed the part where it said 'left lane.' For some reason I was thinking that the mattress was towards the end of the exit ramp, close to where everyone stops. Couldn't say why except that apparently my reading comprehension was a little off in this case. My fault.
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