Secure your loads (part 27)

[Casper]

Well, yesterday, my wife and I had to drive up past Echuca to go and get some things we had bought.
Started nice and early, 9am, in a great mood and looking forward to a nice days driving in each others company and a brief stop in Echuca to see the sights on the way home.
Off we headed, down the Princes Freeway (moderate traffic) and onto the Ring Rd heading for the Hume. Great day, reasonable traffic, all good.
Driving along, there was too much traffic (especially trucks) to use cruise control on the Ring so we just got into the fast lane and sat there, overtaking as needed.
Not far from the big bridge just before the Calder turnoff we were in the fast lane, doing about 100kph or so, large truck behind us at a reasonable distance, nothing in front in our lane. Slow lane had a car beside us and a large semi in front that had a crane mounted on the flatbed.. didn’t think anything about it.
Just then a panel on the cranes engine (about 2 meters long, 1 meter wide made of tin sheet on a boxsteel frame flapped out into the airstream (I didn’t see this, Mrs Casper did). Before she could even say anything it just ripped off the crane and shot straight up (I saw it go up) and started coming into our lane straight for us. Literally… it was coming straight from me and judging by its height and our speed… it was going to be a direct hit on the bonnet/roof on my side… not good.
I was leaning forward to watch it I knew hitting the brakes was not going to be an option.. and there was a big truck behind me that simply would not stop. I decided to floor it and, in about a second, had gone under it and lost sight of it… and broken the speed limit by over 20kph.. screw you Bracks, I’m not losing my life over your anal speed limits on this one.
Anyhow, looked out the back as it landed between me and the truck (yes, too bloody close). He had seen it and had no where to go and couldn’t take any evasive action because of the cars around him so he just locked it all up, tried to swerve over to the other lane a bit and pray. He hit it square on and drove straight over it (if it was a car it would have been a huge wreck but the truck just plowed over it). He was now almost half into the slow lane as it shot out behind him and the car following him (who probably didn’t even know what happened) just drove straight over one edge of it.

By this time the blue truck was coming to a stop, we shot forward to the crane truck and signaled him that something was wrong. He started to pull over and we just headed on our way… he could sort it out with the truck and car driver who he had caused damage too.

Talk about an interesting way to start a long days driving!