LUCKY # 8

Staying with a car theme I have had a few lucky escapes whilst driving. The first company car I had in 1981 was a Ford Cortina Ghia. It went like the clappers. One day a huge quarry truck loaded up with boulders turned right in front of me. I tried to avoid it but still hit it amidships. It didn't move an imch but the Cortina crumpled. I was carted off to the emergency doctors as I hit my head on the windscreen but was OK. The car was written off. My second company car, a Holden Commodore was squashed between two trucks. I was stopped at lights in Otahuhu at the bottom of a hill behind a big truck and could see in my rear view mirror a huge truck careering down the road obviously out of control. I took the car out of gear so as not to wreck the automatic gear systems and put the handbrake on. The truck slammed into the back and catapulted me into the back of the truck in front which in turn smashed into the car in front of it. My car was considerably shortened and was written off.

My third company car, another brand new Holden Commodore .... nothing happenned, I drove it without incident until it was replaced.

What this post is about is my 11th company car, a VW Passat. One Saturday I was driving out to work on the Western motorway in Auckland. This is a multi lane highway, at the point I was on it it was three lanes each way. It was very very windy. Up ahead I saw, way up in the sky what looked like flying paper.

As I got closer I saw that it wasn't paper but full-sized sheets of Gib board.

Gib (Gibralter) board is plaster board about 13 mm thick, 1200 mm wide and 3 metres long. Each sheet is reasonably heavy (about 8 kilos). It is used for lining walls and ceilings in houses. It shouldn't be flying through the air.
My first thought once I realised what it was, was "That looks dangerous, it could land on someone". It was still higher than the very high motorway lampposts at this stage. My next thought was "That looks even more dangerous, it looks like they are going to land on me." Two of them did. One of the boards hit the front of the car damaging the grille, lights and bonnet. Luckily it hit in a vertical position rather than horizontal as it may have skidded across the bonnet and through the windscreen on the drivers side. Result - decapitation.

The second board smashed into the windscreen on the passenger side, again fortunately vertical.

The windscreen 'starred' making it hard to see through.

What was worse though was that as this was plasterboard the white plaster instantly covered the entire windscreen. It was the Hillman Minx experience all over again.

I was in the outside lane. I was travelling at over 100 kph. I thought "Holy shit" all over again. Driving blind I ket the car going straight by using the side mirrors hoping that there was nothing in front of me while I slowed down and manoeuvred over the three lanes to the side of the motorway. Thank God it was Saturday (and not Friday). Traffic was light. When I finally stopped and inspected the damage another car pulled up and said that he had rung *555 for motorway patrol. When the police came it was established that there was a car and trailer on the other side of the motorway with a load of plasterboard. He hadn't tied it down properly. His wife was distraught as she thought that someone would get killed as they saw the board take off. The policeman told me that the driver would be charged with careless use of a motor vehicle, insecure load etc. He was lucky that it wasn't also manslaughter. Hey! I was lucky too.