I was on I-95 South in fairly dense traffic driving in the far left lane when an 18-wheeler started creeping into my lane. I slammed on the horn to let the driver know that he was about to pin me against the concrete median along with the driver behind me. The front edge of my car was about at a parallel level to the driver side door when traffic came to a halt. Mind you, I let off the horn as soon as the driver veered off away from my direction. I carried on looking at the road and listening to my podcast when I heard a loud abrupt SLAM come from the 18-wheeler. The alarm in my gut sang its song and I narrowed my focus in on the crack of his door, realizing in a split second that he had slammed on his brakes and put the truck in park. “Find your out” – as soon as the truck driver opened his door, before he could even stick his leg out of the threshold, I floored it and shot the gap granted to me by the car in front of me and through an opening in front of his truck. Had I not used the cardinal rule of always being able to see the tires of the car in front of you when stopped to allow quick egress, I would have been boxed in. I quickly peeled into the middle lane where the truck was parked and just as quickly checked my right-side view mirror to floor it into the far-right lane, breaking contact and getting off the X. As I drove away, I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw that the driver never got out– because I didn’t give him time to impose his will. We impose OUR will. As anticipated, all the other drivers surrounding our incident filled the gaps in the road which created further distance from me and the *potential aggressor.” Furthermore, that truck continued driving down the road shortly thereafter so there is a high probability he was coming for me. There is no reason why an 18-wheeler would slam on the brakes in the middle lane of heavily dense traffic after being honked at–other than to come give me a hug for preventing an accident OR choosing violence against me. For the latter, I would expect someone to simply flip me off and engage in colorful language through the driver’s side window. Not put the truck in park in the middle of the highway and open the door. Despite the gun on my right hip, knife on my other strong side, and spare mag in my left pocket, the vehicle was my weapon. If I wouldn’t have trusted my gut and picked up on the pattern recognition learned in training and real world in Afghanistan, I could very well have been sitting in a courtroom over the next few weeks after finishing the fight on I-95. Lesson: Whenever you have an out, take it.
In hindsight, If I had not had an out and the driver presented a weapon on approach, breaking shots through my windshield is less than optimal in dense traffic. Rounds do funky things when they impact the windshield’s convex, curved surface. You have to account for every round so there is never an innocent bystander hit. I either would have rammed him with my vehicle (reiterating IF he was approaching me with a weapon) or displaced from my vehicle and created distance on foot. Time, distance, and terrain are always your friend when you are evading. “He who flanks, wins.”
Training and awareness are what allowed me to go home unscathed. Might he simply have opened his door and talked sh*t? Sure, but I wasn’t willing to play the monkey dance. My goal is always to come home to my family, not stroke the ego of man. Keep your eyes up and head on a swivel so when potential violence creeps up to your doorstep, you simply act.
