A Minnesota woman and her child narrowly escaped death when a semi trailer drove into their disabled Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck at high speed on a busy freeway last week.
Shocking footage shows the red pickup stationary in the middle of the three-lane I-35 before a black semi attempts to drive straight through it, causing the pickup to burst into flames as it is tossed down the nearby exit ramp.
Fortunately, 42-year old Susan Norberg and her 12 year-old stepdaughter had escaped to the freeway’s shoulder before the collision and were unharmed. The semi’s driver was also reportedly uninjured in the accident, though both vehicles were wrecked.
If you’re wondering why the woman didn’t move her truck to the side of the road when she realized there was a fault, rather than let it come to a stop in the center lane, so were we. But the StarTribune news website reveals that the woman’s truck had hit a deer on the freeway, setting off the airbags which blocked her view and made the the car immobile once it had come to a stop.
Related: 2024 Chevrolet Silverado EV Debuts With 664 HP, 400 Mile Range, And The Avalanche’s Midgate
Official Minnesota police guidance is that stranded occupants should call for help but remain in their vehicles, because they put themselves at risk by getting out and trying to run across live traffic lanes where other vehicles are traveling at high speeds. But thankfully the pickup’s occupants didn’t heed that warning.
“I could hear the cars whooshing past us,” Norberg told the StarTribune. “I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to get hit here.’ I just wanted to get out of the truck because I was terrified.”
As was Norberg’s stepdaughter, who struggled to get her seatbelt unfastened, and was then frozen with panic and initially unable to leave the truck. Minutes after both made it the roadside the Silverado was destroyed before their eyes.
As for where the trucker’s eyes were in the moments leading up to the collision, we can only speculate. The police aren’t saying, but unless he was having a medical emergency you have to wonder whether he was texting, or fiddling with a navigation system, because the video shows he made no attempt to brake or drive around the Chevy despite the left-hand lane being entirely free from traffic.