The lights flashed in my rearview mirror as I drove north on the Interstate early one morning. The sun has just peeked over the horizon and there were no other cars traveling on my side of the highway… well, accept the state trooper now riding my bumper. I looked at my speedometer. The needle pointed just north of 70.
“I couldn’t be speeding,” I thought.
I pulled the car off onto the shoulder, stopped and waited. I drummed my fingers nervously on the steering wheel, glancing over at my side mirror as the officer approached. I was anxious for two reasons: 1) I had just been pulled over, and 2) I was now going to be late for my call time.
I was still in college at the time, working as a summer intern for an ad agency. I assisted the Broadcast Producer with whatever she needed. Some days that involved me sorting, cataloguing, and organizing the agency’s library of director’s reels (when they were all still on either VHS or 3/4-inch tape). But other days it meant I got to be on set during commercial shoots. And this was one of those days. But it wasn’t going well so far.
The state trooper informed me that I was traveling through a construction zone. He clocked me at 72mph, which ordinarily wouldn’t have been a problem. But the construction zone had a speed limit of 45mph. I looked around.
There was no road construction equipment sitting along the road.
There were no workers present.
There were no lane closures.
The only thing I saw were those large orange barrels lining the shoulder. I soon learned that the mere presence of those barrels meant it was a construction zone and the slower speed limit had to be enforced. So, I begrudgingly took the ticket, whose fee was significantly higher due to my speed and the fact it was in a construction zone. Hardly the expense a young college kid wants to incur.
I drove away, kicking myself for my mistakes.
I should have gotten an earlier start.
I should have known to slow down when I saw the barrels.
I should have been more aware.
When I finally got to set, I was not in a great mood, but I tried my best to put the whole situation behind me and focus on my work.
We were shooting a commercial for an RV manufacturer in a small rural town square. You know the type: the kind you might see in a Hallmark movie, or a period piece set in the 1940s or 50s. It had a large grassy square in the middle on which sat a court house. Roads flanked the quad on all four sides, each side lined with quaint shops.
The crew had to block the right lane on one street so they could park the motorhome in front of the aging movie theater and make room for the talent, the gear, and another picture car. Traffic along the one-way street was diverted to the left lane.
Now, despite this location being Main Street, U.S.A. it was not a run-down, sparsely populated town way past its prime. It was actually very active, with a lot of traffic moving through the square. And you know that the more traffic you have trying to squeeze itself through an unexpected lane closure bottleneck, the more impatient and irritable people become.
This scenario set the stage for what was to happen next.
As I was returning from my lunch break that afternoon, I heard the sounds of crunching metal and terrified screams. I turned and saw a convertible at the street corner, trapped under an 18-wheeler, the driver wide-eyed with fear. The problem was that the driver of the rig had no idea there was a car trapped under his trailer, so he continued to roll forward, attempting to make a right turn along our side of the town square. This resulted in more car crushing, more screams, and more frantic attempts by the crew to get the driver out safely.
Someone finally got the trucker’s attention and the woman was freed from her sporty, yet now completely mangled two-seater. As the accident reports were filled out, I overheard the cause of the incident. The driver of the convertible, irritated by the traffic slowdown caused by our lane closure, didn’t want to wait behind the 18-wheeler any longer.
She whipped her car to the right lane and attempted to make the right turn down our street. But you know those signs posted on the back of every trailer? The ones that say, “This vehicle makes wide right turns?” She either ignored that sign or didn’t think much about it, because she thought the trucker was going straight through the intersection, not prepping his vehicle for a wide turn. So, when the truck also turned right at the same time she was cutting the corner, the result was a very badly crushed car and a deadly near-miss.
That incident has been seared in my mind. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Maybe because of how unexpected and sudden it was. Maybe because of the woman’s screams. Or maybe it was the visual of seeing that car get slowly crushed under the trailer. There probably isn’t a direct, industry-related lesson to be learned from this one. Seeing all of that unfold didn’t help me become better in this field. But that incident, along with my speeding ticket from earlier in the day, did impart some life lessons;
lessons about patience,
attention to detail,
awareness of your surroundings,
gratitude when things could always be worse,
and the fact that whatever your situation in life may be, there will be people that show up to help support you.