whoopsie

she's
actual
size

Well, shit. This has been once strange day. I feel like I've been at work the entire time.

Wait a minute. I have been at work the entire day. Oh well, that's what I get for waking up at noon. And I did agree to stay late tonight.

Hmph.

One of our drivers got into a bit of trouble today. Seems he managed to pull into a driveway, turn around, and then pull down the house's telephone wire while pulling out of the driveway. "That wire's been hanging too low for a while now," said the homeowner.

grin I wish all property owners were that understanding!

So I got to talk to the sheriff's dispatcher today, and to a few deputies at the scene. I had to take some pictures to document the incident, and I also made the initial call to the sheriff. Curious thing: when I explained the situation to the dispatcher ("I have a driver sitting in his bus - with a passenger on board - with some wires strung over the roof of his vehicle."), the dispatcher seemed a little flustered. Like she'd never had to deal with downed wires or something before.

Anyway.

When you have many drivers in many vehicles out on the road, stuff is going to happen. Drivers don't check clearances, and drive under overhangs that they don't fit under. "Um, I'm stuck." They drive off roads and into ditches because they were worried about the bee that had gotten into the bus. They back into stuff, like telephone poles and cars and people. Their buses get hit by birds, baseballs and golf balls.

Basically, the vehicles get beaten up quite a bit.

It's rather embarrassing, to drive a vehicle with a big old dent in it. Everyone things you did it, and you get saucy comments. "Didn't see that pole, hmm?"

Of course, once I was the one who put the dent into the vehicle. I had just started at the university, and I was sent out very early in a van to pick up a dispatcher. I was tired. It was dark. I wasn't paying attention.

When I picked up the dispatcher, I started to make a right hand turn around her truck. She started meeping. "Look out for the cones! Look out the cones!"

"What cones?" I was asking when I felt a sickening crunch. The dispatcher looked at me with wide eyes.

I thought I had run over one of those little concrete barriers they put at the end of a parking space. I was so in denial; there's no way a parking stop could have made that much noise.

Turns out I had hit two (two) yellow poles that protected a fire hydrant. One of them had been knocked clean off of its foundation and had rolled away. The van...

Well, the van was dented. Bad. In fact, the passenger doors were crushed in. Both of them. When I looked at them, I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Shit," I murmured. I stood there in shock as the dispatcher started filling out an accident report. A police cruiser came to do a report, since there was property damage to the poles. I silently sat in his cruiser while he filled out the report.

He noticed my silence and stunned look. "Hey," he said gently. "There's a reason they call them accidents." He pointed at a parking lot light halfway to the street. "See that pole?" I nodded. "Me. Two years ago, in a cruiser." He grinned. "Wrapped that puppy right around the pole. Totaled the cruiser."

Yep. There's a reason they call them accidents.

But the incident today (incident, not accident, since there was not $400 of damage) was not the driver's fault.

The wire was too low, you know?