I get to swing from my place on the Ventura/Los Angeles County line late yesterday over to the 5 freeway and north above Edwards AFB to pick up my marooned nephew. I'm already tired and it's raining.And it seems my nephew let his insurance lapse by missing a payment and my insurance doesn't cover undesignated drivers. Lovely, So we head out and I have a hot coffee in the center console, the window cracked open to keep fresh air in my face and the radio firmly turned off over his protests. And I'm pushing a fast double nickle in the slow lane being passed by lots of high beams and chinese good luck signs out the windows. We come to a stretch of the freeway with an overpass that is for all practical purposes a tunnel.And my mental map reminds me this has always been a nasty stretch in a brutal drive. And I can feel the onset of pilot's TUC and tell my nephew I'm pulling over to rest. And he objects since we are so close to the amenities of the Valley and I almost kept driving. But something said PULL OVER NOW. I did, as best I could with my hazards on when this banging sound of multiple crashes followed by a huge fireball blew back out of the tunnel ahead. We wound up sleeping for 6 hours AFTER we finally got rerouted back north. I pulled of at a rest stop. My nephew objected. " I can't sleep like this! I said "The experienced Coast Guardsman can sleep anyw...ZZZZZ." 15 trucks and cars piled up with two known dead so far. I told my nephew he could walk until his insurance is reinstated.

Glad you and nephew are ok.

Your experience makes several good points. One reflects my own experience. When that odd little voice is telling you to do or not do something, listen!

It is impossible to tell how many bad things I have avoided by listening to that voice, but every time I ignored it, I ended up wishing I hadn't.

Strange but true. Survival instinct....?

Interesting, I never take the truck route tunnel, staying up top in the air. That looked like a good place to not be. Glad you're still with us.

Wow! You live a life of danger, Chris.

I wish the voice in my head was as helpful as yours. It's always saying things like "Go ahead Charlie, DW won't mind.", "Light the fuse, Charlie. You'll have time to run to safety." or "Hey Charlie, try giving the cat a fleabath."

What's really annoying is my name is Mark.

-Blast

I travel back and forth between PA and NJ every few weekends (about 250 miles). I've done the trip so many times now that I can run it straight threw no problem, but I've often gotten the feeling to stop at the rest stop for a few minutes to take a little break. A few times I swear it has saved me, because I ended up being right behind an accident, major snow storm, ect. Really makes you wonder if we do have some sort of a sixth sense or have someone looking out for us up above.

Three dead in the final count, one a child.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/10/14/tunnel.fire.ap/index.html

This was just a regular day. Can you imagine it under evacuation conditions?

I was letting the car warm up a bit while yawning one morning some years ago (Silicon Valley, CA), and I literally heard a voice in my head that said "Watch out for the bicycle!"

I've had "feelings" before, but never something as strong as that. It was spooky. So I headed the nine miles to work, got off the freeway, and saw a guy on a bicycle ahead of me.

Nah! But my foot moved from the gas to just barely touch the brake, to know it was right there.

A delivery truck just ahead of the cyclist turned right and his handtruck flew off from where the blade was tucked under the door, right at the cyclist. Cyclist jumped right, toward the sidewalk, landing with bike and both legs in my (right) lane.

Solid traffic on my left, no time to climb the curb with all four wheels. I stopped with my left front tire on the back wheel of the bike, about a foot from the guy's legs.

I guess not all voices are bad. Well, maybe Blast's....

Sue

Please tell me that you didn't pull over and nap on the shoulder of the freeway! In addition to being illegal, over the years I worked over 30 fatal accidents where a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of I-5 got run over by another sleepy driver (usually a big rig). Hopefully you took the Calgrove off ramp and napped somewhere down on the Old Road...

I hate it when the voices in my head confuse me with someone else.

Glad to see someone elses medications not working right either.

Speaking of medication, Blast. How's the battle wound from the cat?