Assurance Saved the Day

I am going to start by painting a picture of the situation as it unfolded. I was driving my Cascadia south on I-35 through Austin, TX. For those of you that travel through Austin, you know that there are more than a few traffic situations to be dealt with. I was coming off the upper level where it joins with the lower level of I-35 and traffic was slowing. There was a lot of activity developing to the right of my truck. As I slowed, I glanced into my left-hand mirror to see if there was space available to merge left to avoid the congestion which was developing in the lane directly ahead of me and to my right. The very instant my eyes glanced to the left an automobile from the road directly to my right merged to their left directly in front of me. As soon as they had positioned themselves in the real estate directly in my path traffic instantly stopped and they hit their brakes. Fortunately, during this split-second sequence of events, the Detroit Assurance identified a collision was imminent and instantaneously applied the foundation brakes of my Cascadia.

The good news was that a potential situation was mitigated because of Detroit Assurance. After everything settled down, I questioned whether I would have had an accident in this instant had I not had a collision mitigation system. I surmised I probably would have impacted the vehicle which had turned into my lane of travel. Needless to say, I was happy to have a vehicle equipped with Detroit Assurance to catch this situation I had missed. After I got out of the traffic congestion, I also thought about what I should have done differently in this situation. The best thing I was able to come up with was to wait until the entire situation of slowing and merging vehicles came to a complete stop before looking in my mirror to move to the left.

I have shared notes with other drivers who have embraced the technology of a collision mitigation situation, here are the areas we all agree on:

1. Our goal is to drive in a manner to never have the system be activated

2. It has changed our habits in how we deal with sharing the road with the rest of the highway users

We are glad to have a system which at the very least will mitigate or possibly avoid an accidental collision as we ply our trade.

Walking the Dog

Detroit Assurance

Henry Albert

Henry Albert is the owner of Albert Transport, Inc., based in Statesville, NC. Before participating in the "Slice of Life" program, Albert drove a 2001 Freightliner Century Class S/T™, and will use his Cascadia for general freight and a dry van trailer. Albert, who has been a trucker since 1983, was recognized by Overdrive as its 2007 Trucker of the Year.