The $500,000 Telephone Pole : Trucks, Lousy Drivers, Lawyers, and the LAPD

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This is a three part series describing a series of events surrounding a one-vehicle accident in Santa Fe Springs, California.

Part One: Trucks, Lousy Drivers, Lawyers, and the LAPD

Part Two: The Cowboy goes to Court

Part Three: The Lawsuit Comes Calling

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The LAPD didn't clobber me like they did Rodney King, back in the day...they just did everything in their power to pretend I wasn't there. Lawyers weren't yet involved, just a Puerto Rican American lady who qualfied forever as a lousy driver when she tried to pass my truck on the right that morning in Santa Fe Springs, California.

Santa Fe Springs is a city in Los Angeles County, one of the locations where my employer had a truck terminal. I was in the process of turning my assigned Volvo truck tractor into the terminal driveway, towing a 53-foot dry van. My wife, Pam, and our orange and white cat, Moe Key Man, were along for the ride that month, and the ride was about to get rough.

That right turn is a tight one, requiring the driver of a big rig to straddle two lanes--i.e. move a few feet to the left, leaving a space between you and the curb--before starting your turn. If you don't do that, your semi trailer will offtrack enough to jump the curb and scrape the wall of the terminal building. Traffic was light, almost nonexistent in L.A. terms. I'd been signaling the turn for the past two hundred feet or so...not that it made any difference to Ms. Nascar.

I picked up her approach in the lefthand mirror as her brand new silver Mitsubishi Montero SUV zoomed up out of a dip that ran under a railroad overpass about 400 yards to our rear. She was smoking. There was still another lane open on our left...but her vehicle suddenly vanished from that mirror, reappearing on the passenger side as she amazingly opted to fly by on the right, hammer down.

Now, folks, what went through her mind when she saw that big truck cab blocking her intended path, we'll never know...though I'm pretty sure it went something like,

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

My foot had slammed on the Volvo's brakes the moment I saw her coming; we were dead stopped when she went flying by my position, jaw dropped somewhere down around brassiere level, eyes bugged out like one of those little pee-on-your-rug Pug dogs. Even at that point, dumb as a box of rocks for failing to consider what that blinking turn signal on the back of my trailer had meant, already scooted sideways enough that she was running on tilt with the passenger side tires zipping down the sidewalk...even then, it was possible to get through unscathed.

If you were truly an expert behind the wheel, that is.

But no. Sadly, no. It was right smack dab at the terminal entrance that she fully panicked, cranked the wheel hard right like she meant to make that same right turn into the terminal driveway.

At (I estimated) 65 mph or so.

Didn't work. Pam and I give that Mitsubishi full credit: She did her best to roll the thing right then and there, but it refused to tip over.

Still, things were about to get worse for her. The vehicle shot off the street on an angle across the driveway, into several little trees with trunks two to three inches in diameter, pushed the security fence back--and slammed, headon and dead center, into a telephone pole standing maybe twelve inches on the other side of the fence.

Handicapping tip: If it's your money, bet on the telephone pole.

The pole held. The SUV rebounded, bouncing straight back--while springing up into the air a couple of feet and spiraling clockwise at the same time. Don't ask me to explain the physics involved, but that's what it did. When it came to rest, it was lying over on the passenger side, and so was Ms. Nascar, sans seatbelt and knocked colder than a mackerel by the exploding airbag.

A quick scan of the mirrors later, I spoke aloud, "'I'd better get off the street."

I pulled in past the wreck, leaving room for emergency types to operate whenever they showed up, set the brakes, and jumped out of the cab, telling Pammie, "Stay in the truck!"

Back at the downed vehicle, first on the scene (duh!), I was looking fast and hard for a way to access the passenger compartment--while having zero intention of actually finding a way in. No way in Hell was I going to get within arm's reach of this woman if there was any way to avoid it; I just wanted to look good trying. The minute I so much as breathed on the young lady (she turned out to be in her early thirties), I could expect a gazillion dollar court case claiming I'd broken her neck and must pay, pay, pay.

My Momma didn't raise no fool.

Fortunately, lousy driver or not, Ms. N did have the sense to keep her car doors locked while driving around in the L.A. area. By the time I'd checked the driver side doors (now the topside doors) and the hatchback, another guy was there...helping her out through the sunroof as she was slowly coming back to consciousness.

Good.

A little man (well under five feet tall) rushed up and began yelling up to my wife as she sat in the truck cab, swearing I had not had my blinker on. Pam doesn't take crap from anybody, most especially from anybody trying to diss her man, so he ran off pretty quickly with his tail between his legs...but he later got his claim included in the official police record of the incident. We're pretty sure he knew the SUV's driver.

However, by this time I had my company camera out, the little disposable we all carried in the jockey box for just this sort of thing. When the film was developed, the still-flashing blinker was clearly visible in several photos--I'd neglected to turn it off after setting the brakes. Lucky me!

When the cops showed up (which took a while), they eagerly took the incompetent lady driver's statement, the little liar guy's statement, and a few others. But their known hatred of truck drivers--especially drivers for companies not headquartered in California--was blatant in the extreme. It took me an hour of intermittent pestering to get a senior officer to even talk to me long enough to hear what I had to say...and I doubt any of my commentary ever made it into the official file.

Even more impressive was their absolute refusal to even listen to Pam or to the terminal gate guard posted no more than seventy yards down the driveway at the truck yard guard shack. Despite their burly bodies, steroid enhanced or I'll be a monkey's uncle, they were even openly chickens**t, too, refusing to discuss the odds on who they did or did not intend to ticket. If their bosses back at the station decided I should get a ticket, I was told, it would be mailed to my home address in due course.

Of course.

When we came in off the road a couple of weeks later, the ticket was waiting in our Helena, Montana, mailbox. They'd charged me with careless driving, claiming that I'd messed up by (a) straddling lanes and (b) failing to signal. The fine was to be $145, which stung a bit. Far more importantly, accepting the ticket meekly or losing in court, either one, would put me at least partway toward losing my CDL--my Commercial Driver's License, without which I'd have no way to make a living. Plus, I was pissed. It would be years before Charlie Sheen would echo my position, but he got it right: Losing was not an option.

The fun was about to begin.