Have you ever sat in your car and thought, “Good lord, there is a rather large and frankly out of control cement truck heading straight towards me”?
No, you probably haven’t, I guess. However, that is exactly what happened to a guy called Dr Guan Zhu lately. The bold Dr Zhu is a professor at a university in Texas and he was driving to work in his Toyota Sienna when the scary incident in the video below happened. He only suffered some minor injuries but his brush with the truck got me thinking about what you or I would do in the same situation…
Close your eyes?
I realise that closing my eyes in this situation wouldn’t do any good and might even make things worse. Having said that, I can’t deny that I closed my eyes instinctively the first time I watched this video. Why don’t the people who make 3D action movies make them as good and as scary as this?
Perform a stunning manoeuvre
In all my years of driving I have never had to perform a stunning manoeuvre to get out of danger that causes nearby pedestrians to break into spontaneous applause. This seems like the perfect opportunity to do it but what on Earth could I do? Maybe I could have slipped it into reverse and tried to shoot away but I just don’t think there was time to do anything.
Scream
Have you ever screamed behind the wheel? The only time I have done this has been due to the football on the radio and the day Scotland scored an unexpectedly brilliant goal against France I scared about half a dozen other drivers around me. In a case like this, I think the only think I could expect to do is close my eyes, scream and hope for the best.
As regards the video, the driver of the truck was handed a ticket by police when they arrived, while we hope someone handed Dr Zhu a new pair of trousers.
- What would you do in this situation?