Trash on the Highway

This is not the title of a country song, but something I get mad about because of the danger, as well as the fact that it’s littering. Hauling your stuff in an open truck bed is not legal. I have spent thousands of dollars repairing my car because I’ve hit pieces of a wooden pallet and a blown semi truck tire on the interstate. I drive defensively looking ahead in the road for pieces of furniture dumped out of open bed trucks. I’ve had a dresser drawer slide out of a truck in front of my car. Fortunately I was able to move into the left lane and avoid it. One morning, I was driving out of town very early, and a hardback book hit the driver’s side of my windshield. It wasn’t War and Peace, but made a SMACK on the windshield and frightened me.

A horrible accident happened on the interstate a few years back when mattresses fell out of a pick up truck and killed several people in a car hit by them. The state of Tennessee has litter laws that outlaw open bed hauling, but folks continue to move their stuff in pick up trucks.

I once spotted a destroyed mattress on the side of the interstate, after someone hit it. The insides of the mattress was blown everywhere. I've seen chairs on the side of the interstate, and I know that these toppled out of trucks. I once saw a semi trucker run over a plastic play gym as it fell out of an open truck in front of him. No, the play gym didn’t survive.