You’d think that the really big window above the steering wheel on nearly all trucks would be useful for something, like, say, seeing other cars on the road with you so you don’t, you know, plow into them and shove them off the road like a Roomba pushing a wayward hot dog under your sofa. And yet, somehow, that’s what happened on Highway 401 in Ontario, Canada.
The incident was caught on another car’s dashcam Monday afternoon, and it’s pretty alarming to see, that big yellow stone-slinging truck shoving a Honda Civic sedan sideways down the road. Thankfully and incredibly, no one was hurt, so you can gawk without guilt:
The Toronto Sun spoke with the driver of the truck, who told them, incredibly, that
“he didn’t see what was happening in front of him”
…which is a very unsettling idea.
It’s not clear if there’s some flaw in the truck’s design that is impeding forward visibility or if the driver’s actions contributed to the inability to see the whole car, right there, but there is an investigation undergoing with Ontario Provincial Police to figure out what happened.
Drivers identified in dash cam video of a crash where a truck was pushing a car to the shoulder on #Hwy401 https://t.co/J79L0s6iat
— Sgt Kerry Schmidt (@OPP_HSD) January 15, 2020
Also puzzling is the tractor-trailer that’s following the stone-slinger truck and veers toward the stricken Honda by the side of the road, nearly (or maybe barely) hitting the car.
Was the stone-slinger truck pushing the Honda to the side of the road deliberately? Moving it off the road after the driver realised he’d hit the car? The driver did pull over and remained at the scene after the wreck.
At this point, nothing is very clear, and no charges have been filed yet.
Be careful out there. And, if you’re driving a big truck, don’t be afraid to peek out that windshield every now and then.