Monday while on our way to a week of camping in the Blue Mountains with 3 of my 4 kids and family’s, we encountered the scariest thing you would ever expect. A lunatic truck driver…

I was driving my eco friendly Kia Niro and keeping up with traffic, passing the slower semi trucks. My DIL Laura and granddaughter 11-year old Everett were my passengers. Mapping guidance was telling us we had 5.4 miles until our turnoff. We were so excited to finally be “almost there”.

The sun was nearly down and it was that strange time of evening when lights are on but it’s not dark yet.

I was in the left lane getting ready to pass a truck going just under the speed limit of 70. I check my rear view mirror often and at this moment saw no one behind me until… there was! Two giant headlights were inches from my bumper!

There was less than a car length between my car (in the left lane) and the semi I was passing on the right. This joker trucker behind me actually started to swerve into the right lane as if he was passing me! That’s when I saw it was a semi and not a large pickup that we all thought it was!

I stepped on the gas and raced past the semi to the right, and as I was pulling back into the right lane noticed my speedometer was at 100 mph!! Wow. I’ve never abused my beautiful little car like that before!

The trucker from hell stayed close but once I changed lanes he moved past, blaring his horn as he did so. I had to reciprocate and beep my little horn. It made me feel better…

Once the trucker passed me, he slowed down and was driving parallel to another semi to his right. I had just moved into the left lane to pass the slower truck and suddenly, that was not possible. No one could get ahead in this game – and that’s what this had quickly become.

We drove at that pace and position for a minute or more and hell trucker finally sped up. Laura, Everett and I chatted briefly among us. Should we pass him or stay behind him? We didn’t trust that he wouldn’t try to run us off the road so I tucked in behind him.

Apparently I made him mad because he eventually slowed down and we found ourselves traveling at 25 miles per hour. Vehicles coming up behind us were veering left as they caught up to us- our speed making no sense.

We were so close to our exit now, .7 miles. As the exit approached, the crazy trucker came to a complete stop and blocked most of the exit! What to do…

We stopped behind him briefly while we examined our Options. At any moment I expected him to open his door and with gun in hand, head back to our car. Our only option was to whip past him and hope there was enough space to take the exit.

I took the chance, stepped heavily on the gas and did my best to pass by him. Thank goodness my car was quicker than his big semi and tony brain. He saw what I was doing and actually steered his cab out towards my car but I was too quick and took the exit before he could stop us.

We were all so happy to be out of his reach as he had already committed to getting back on the freeway. As we looked directly to our left we could see that he was on the freeway but still going slow. My guess is he was trying to see if we would be coming back onto the freeway so he could continue his games. We did not and couldn’t believe that whole incident was 5 minutes long.

I’m so thankful we weren’t injured and escaped his space safely. I wish we could have had time or the ability to get his details but it was too dark and we were all just trying to stay safe. My hope is that another driver saw his strange behavior and called it in…

I hope the rest of our trip is less eventful!

#scarytruckers