Coming back from lunch today I somewhat witnessed an accident between a semi and a maroon passenger car on Lake Cook Road and I-294. I was in front of the maroon car and there was one other car between us. The semi crashed right into the back of the maroon car. We were stopped at a light at the time. The semi driver apparently hadn’t noticed in time that the traffic had stopped. The fact that I could see the top of the crumpled trunk above the roof of the passenger car should tell you how much of the car had been squashed by the semi. The engine was also making smoke so my guess is that when a semi smashes the back of a car, the exhaust system is damaged and closed up and this causes some sort of engine damage as well. I would say the car is probably totalled.
The stupid part of this is that I passed the semi about 1 minute before and noticed the driver talking on a Nextel phone. He wasn’t looking at the road then and probably wasn’t when he crashed. He was looking in the left side mirror and not paying attention to what was happening in front of him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
There were four passengers in the car. Two guys in the back and two women in the front. Everyone was in their 20’s. The passenger side woman got out, put her hand over her mouth, and just stood there. The driver side woman got out and started screaming at the semi driver. She was really angry and was doing all these little 1 inch high tantrum jumps. Glad I’m not the semi driver.
In general, traffic in Chicago requires more alertness than most other areas. There are sooo many cars and everyone is in a hurry. You can’t drive 5 minutes without seeing someone do something rude and stupid. You can’t listen to the traffic reports on the radio in the morning or evening without hearing about one expressway or another which is no longer express because some moron can’t drive. Why do I live here again??? Oh, right…it must be that lovely winter weather.