Roadside Warning

For five years during the 1990s, I worked for the Ohio State Medical Association as a liaison to large medical group practices. In this position, I made a fair amount of road trips to meet with administrators and physician presidents of these group practices which were scattered throughout mostly rural parts of Ohio.

I was pretty comfortable driving on my own. My job was based in centrally-located Columbus and I could drive to any town in Ohio in under three hours. Plus, I always packed my AAA card and the medical association’s monster-sized yet portable mobile phone. (Not the pocket-sized cell phones we have today.) No worries.

When I had this liaison job there was no such thing as GPS units, audio books, or satellite radio for your car. I traveled with a stack of cassette tapes because very few radio stations operated in the towns I drove through. I was lucky if I was able to get static-free reception on a farm report.
I had a lot of time to let my mind wander, to unleash my imagination.

One afternoon I was driving back to Columbus after meeting with a large multi-specialty group practice in rural southeastern Ohio. I had a two-hour drive ahead of me.

I’m thinking about my book. At the time, I was in the middle of reading a murder/suspense novel involving a series of road-side killings. In the book, investigators had determined that the victims, all women, had each been driving alone. Each of their cars was found parked on the side of a highway, their bodies found in wooded areas just beyond the shoulder where their cars had been parked.

After being tested, it was concluded that each of the victims’ cars had been in good working order. No signs of overheating or lack of fuel. Transmissions in good repair. No flat tires.

What the investigators couldn’t figure out was why the women had pulled over to the side of the road in the first place. Was someone impersonating a highway patrol officer? Had there been another car on the side of the road that the women stopped to help? I was at a place in the book where the investigators had not yet discovered the answer.

So, I’m cruising along this two-lane highway which breaks into two northbound lanes (the direction I’m traveling) to allow faster cars to pass slower ones. The extra lane is temporary, I know, so I plan to speed up to pass this pokey semi ahead of me. I make my move, pushing my foot down on the gas pedal.

Suddenly, the semi starts honking. Oh! Am I breaking some law? Is he mad that I’m passing him? Or, more likely, he wants me to pull over! My adrenaline surging, I push my foot down deeper onto the pedal, rushing to get ahead of him. Thinking about the unfortunate victims in my book, I know the semi driver is trying to get me to pull over to the side of the highway so he can kill me!

Then I think to myself, that doesn’t make sense. Why would I pull over? Unless, if and when I turned to look at the semi driver he was planning to signal to me that my car was smoking or that I had a low tire. Who knows what murdering maniacs are thinking in their heads? It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to look at him and I’m certainly not going to pull over!

I was getting a bit panicked. Can you tell?

Then I see about a mile ahead of me, a highway patrol car with its lights flashing red and blue. A state trooper was standing outside his vehicle, waving several cars ahead of me to keep going. Preparing to keep moving myself, I am shocked when the trooper signals for me to stop. With his left hand maintaining a “stop” position, he points his right hand to the side of the highway, just in front of his patrol car.

Crap.

The first thing he asks is, “What color is your car?” What kind of question is that?

I couldn’t remember what the Ford Motor Company (Found On Road Dead, according to some Oldsmobile-loving Michigander friends of mine) had named this bluish-green color, so I answer, “Green.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought. You were speeding.”

What? Who said? How did he know?

Well, as it turns out, the coppers really can track speeders with their Ohio Highway Patrol airplanes. But frankly, I don’t think that’s very fair. It gives law enforcement an unfair and sneaky advantage. The patrol plane had apparently told the land cop that there was a speeding green SUV approaching him. I should have said my car was blue!

I consider telling him my long, involved, damsel-in-distress story about the murdering semi truck driver trying to get me to pull over and how I zoomed past him to save my life, and that that was why I had been speeding. But, I decide to accept the fact that I had been busted. That I would get a speeding ticket. No reason to make him suspect that I need some sort of mental health intervention too.

Back on the highway again, struggling to keep my speed under 60, it occurrs to me that maybe the semi was trying to signal to me to slow down because “smokey” (the cops) was in the air.

Warning to all the folks who continue to drive the highways of Ohio: If I was right and that semi driver is a murderer, he may still be out there. Beware.✿