Introduction

This morning I was driving from TN to GA when the following sequence of events happened. This story is true and I’ll keep this short.

The Sequence of Events

I was driving southbound on I-75 and was nearing Chattanooga. I was in the left lane, with a hazard lane beside me and then a concrete wall. I was talking to my wife via bluetooth at the time.

Suddenly two police cars went screaming by on the northbound side, doing about 100 mph. The traffic in front of me stopped very suddenly and I told her, I’m now in a traffic jam and we hung up. I had to hit the brakes hard because there was no warning since I was on an uphill section of the road.

When I looked behind me, the car behind me managed to stop but a big white Dodge pickup truck and trailer had to veer into the hazard lane to avoid hitting the car behind me. I pulled up and the car behind me pulled up a little to give the white truck some room to move back into the left lane. It was a good thing we did that, as you will see.

A few seconds after that about 8 more police cars went screaming past on the northbound side. As I looked up towards the top of the hill, suddenly a crazy looking driver in a dark blue or black SUV came flying at us, going the wrong way in the hazard lane!

I saw him so perfectly that I could have a police sketch artist draw his face. The funny thing is, I never looked at the faces of the police (men/women) that were in the two cars chasing him down the hazard lane, only feet behind him. Sparks were flying everywhere as well as a section of chain-linked fence that was being dragged behind him. The fence was whipping side to side and I thought for sure it was going to tag me as I sat there in my truck.

Of course all this happened in a matter of seconds. The guy was there and then he was gone. As I watched the events unfold behind me, I knew that a head-on collision was inevitable. Somewhere behind me, this crazy guy hit a semi and then fled on foot.

At the time of writing this article, the story is still unfolding as the guy has not been captured. Click here for a link to the story, or just click on Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 – The story from today (click image for the article)

The Connection To The Rich Roll Podcast

Just before the phone call to my wife, I had just finished the RRP episode 239 with Ryan Holiday (Figure 2). Near the end of the episode, Rich and Ryan were talking about how we actually have no control over events in our lives, even though we think we do. The situation I encountered a few minutes later proved that point.

Figure 2 – RRP 239 (click image to visit Rich’s website).

In my estimation, there were only a few spare seconds for the driver of the white truck behind me to have survived a high-speed, head-on collision. If he had not moved out of the hazard lane in those few seconds, he would have been blasted in the face by that crazy driver going the wrong way down the interstate. Luckily the timing was so perfect that nobody was seriously injured.

Unfortunately for some people today, that guy damaged their cars, as well as several police cars. One police officer survived getting slammed in the rear by a semi. It was pure chaos today!

I’m thankful for every day that I get to hit the sack in one piece! I guess Rich was right when he proclaimed that we are at the mercy of the universe, or something like that.