If you are ever tired and driving.. PLEASE pull over.. We are lucky to have survived

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Hey guys,

Have had the hardest experience of my life last week. We have a small business refurbishing computers etc and were on our way home from Wisconsin last week. We have a bad habit of pushing to hard and my wife was driving and fell asleep at the wheel. We rolled somewhere between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 times off the side of highway 865 (no rumble strips here btw) with 121 PC's packed in an Astro Cargo Van. My wife got the brunt of it since we went down driver side first and the glass blew out all over her. She has 14 staples on the top of her head (no fracture thankfully!) stitches all over her face and her left arm and a fracture in her left eye socket along the nose which will require follow up surgery. Somehow I walked away with minor nicks and bruises. Being a small business and barely paying bills month to month and my wife's parents not having health care options she has no health care to speak of and we only had bodily injury coverage on OTHER people (If you don't have healthcare I suggest adding this to your auto policy!!) Out of the 121 PC's 10-15 MAY be resell-able as PC's the rest we are going to have to part out and try to recoup our investment... Another piece of advice, if you have alot of expensive cargo for business use you can get business insurance that covers cargo in transit. I didn't know this but it is a lesson learned... Anyway, if anyone can learn from our mistakes then posting this is worth it. You guys have been like family over the past 7 years and I would hate to see anyone go through this or something worse.

I am also thinking about writing letters to make rumble strips mandatory on our interstates... Not sure yet but its a thought..

Here are pictures of our Van for those that want to look:

http://jarrodchristman.com/van

Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best,
Brandon

[Sparky]

Ouch man! OUCH! Praying for a speedy recovery for your wife. If you haven't already I would go to a good chiropractor (both of you) and get checked out. You both got banged around. I emphasize a GOOD chiro because there are a lot of bad ones out there unfortunately who are quacks and give the good ones a bad name.

Rumble strips may not always help though. Friends of mine were heading home, long trip, and she fell asleep at the wheel. Drifted right, hit the rumble strip which woke her up and jerked the wheel left too hard and ended up flipping their vehicle across the interstate. Soo... yeah, the strips don't always help.

[Charles Wirth]

Thanks for sharing and I hope your wife recovers quickly, glad there was no loss of life.

Charles

[karl.martin]

Thanks for sharing.

I wish you and your wife a fast recovery.

[Movieman]

Thank God no one was killed..

[Conquistador SW]

Looking at the van I am glad nothing worse happened than you described.

I hope your wife recovers quickly!

[[XC] leviathan18]

I can understand when I went to NY we drove to Boston at past midnight, it was one of the toughest trips I have ever done.

The problem is that the Interstate is a long straight with some soft curves in the mix, there is nothing to keep your attention. We had to sing, play stupid games, stop and walk around and do a million things to be able to drive without failing in the arms of morpheus. Until that time I always wandered how in hell people fell sleep driving, in that trip I understood why.

I'm used to other kind of freeways, where you don't have a chance of stop thinking, because there is a pot hole a curve , s driving, elevation changes and my cars usually are manual.

[CrazyNutz]

Sorry to hear this, but glad to hear you guys survived

[D_A]

I learned this one a while ago.
As a first year apprentice the pay was abysmal, so I got a part time second job at a servo (gas station) on the night shift. One Friday I got up at 0500, worked my normal shift, came home and had dinner then went and did night shift. Since it was dawn when I finished I went home, had a shower and rode over the mountains to Sydney (state capitol, about an hour and a half trip in heavy highway traffic) and met up with some friends. We kicked on till everyone went home at about 2AM Sunday morning so I followed suit and rode back over the mountains. To this day I still have a blank in my memory of a 5 km section of road through a town and part way down the mountain. I woke up in my own lane half way down the mountain pass but having ridden about 3 miles more or less in my sleep. It scared the crap out of me!
I've done long distances since, but never when sleep deprived.

Brandon, I'm glad nobody was killed in that mess. Somebody could easily have been and I'm sure you're well aware of that. Take care of the missus, you're both probably pretty rattled.

[nanoprobe]

Thankfully no one was seriously hurt. A little prayer that your wife fully recovers. I think there are probably many stories like yours from members here. I fell asleep at the wheel in the wee hours of the morning on the Fl. turnpike coming home from a tournament. At 70 MPH with the cruise control on I started to drift off the road to the right. Fortunately this road had rumble strips and I awoke looking at a concrete piling supporting an overpass. I didn't even have time to step on the brake. I just yanked the steering wheel to the left and missed the piling by maybe a foot. Thankfully there were no other cars coming and I was able to not lose control of the car. If I had awoken even a split second later, I probably wouldn't be able to tell my story. I pulled off the rode and just started bawling. My wife and infant son kept flashing in my mind. Thank God for small miracles because I believe in my heart that's exactly what this was.

[STEvil]

I know that one all too well...

[D_A]

Oops

[itznfb]

I am also thinking about writing letters to make rumble strips mandatory on our interstates... Not sure yet but its a thought..

Sorry to hear about the injuries. I'm glad it wasn't worse.

Those rumble strips have definitely saved my life a few times. Since you typically fall asleep in the right lane and it's normally sloped toward the shoulder you'll naturally veer into the rumble strips when you fall asleep.

[Vinas]

20 years ago I fell asleep at the wheel and jumped a curb on a highway that had a large grass divider. Put a dent in my (at the time new) truck and scared the living crap out of me.

I'm glad everyone came out alive and safe Brandon. A lot of people don't believe in a higher power but man, that could have turned out a lot worse so easily.

[retro77]

Boy I hope you guys recover fast. Sorry to hear about this. Glad you guys are both alive.

I pushed my limits last night too. I worked at the office from 8am to about 10:30am then headed out to work on site for a client until 11pm. Then I had to drive about an hour home. I did miss my exit and I there is a good few mile warning and I never even saw any signs for my exit. I was pretty tired but I made it home. Today I slept in and I told work that I won't be in the office in the mornings while working on this project.

Hopefully you guys will recover soon. My thoughts are with you guys.

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Hi all thanks so much for all the well wishes and responses. We are doing ok, my wife's surgery is going to be Monday and she is excited to get it done with. She is such a strong person and truly my inspiration and motivation to keep going. She was making office space stapler jokes while they were putting her staples in! I am back in Dayton and going through the PC's and salvaging what I can from the load of PC's. Thanks again you guys made my day today.

Edit: I will Let you guys know how things go and keep you all up to date. I understand both sides of the rumble strips thing and that is why I am on the fence... I do think it would have been enough just to bring my wife's eyes back to the road but its so hard to say, and I can see it causing an accident far worse especially if it involves other vehicles. I am just so thankful that we are both going to be ok... its just not worth it to push yourself that hard and from the sounds of your guy's response you all have had close calls and any one of those could have been as bad or worse than what we went through. I just hope that those around us can see our example and realize that its just not worth it and pull over, get the hour or 2 cat nap etc or even call it a night. Anyway, I really appreciate you all sharing your stories and I am glad all of you are here to tell them!

Take care will be in touch,
Brandon

[OldChap]

Best wishes for a full recovery to you both.

There have been times when I drove tired for a living...in my youth in the forces. It got so bad one time that taking a break I sat on my toolbox on the side of the road and just fell asleep there. In later years I have woken when the tyre was riding the side of the pavement kerbstone and this in regular commuting traffic. Now I just don't plan journeys for times when I could be tired because I know my ability to stay awake is diminished...in fact I probably over estimated that ability all the way to age 50.

[shoota]

Glad you're ok. My dad drives a lot for work and a buddy of mine suggested to him eating sunflower seeds when he's sleepy. It really works so keep a pack in your car just in case.

[kjeldoran]

Glad you are okay!

I never fell asleep at the wheel, but about 10 years ago me and a buddy left a LAN party around 5AM. We were up for over 24 hours and running on pizza, wings and mt dew. When we got home, we were questioning our judgement of the lights we went through (about 15+). We swore they were all green...we will never know lol.

Sucks that you lost your equipment. Maybe try seeing if the insurance company will offer any reimbursement? It may not be the full amount, but I'd imagine any amount will help you out.

As for rumble strips, I know of a few highways in the St. Louis metro area that do not have them as well. The interstate highways have them, but once you start moving towards the suburbs...they disappear unless they were recently redone.

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Glad you are okay!

I never fell asleep at the wheel, but about 10 years ago me and a buddy left a LAN party around 5AM. We were up for over 24 hours and running on pizza, wings and mt dew. When we got home, we were questioning our judgement of the lights we went through (about 15+). We swore they were all green...we will never know lol.

Sucks that you lost your equipment. Maybe try seeing if the insurance company will offer any reimbursement? It may not be the full amount, but I'd imagine any amount will help you out.

As for rumble strips, I know of a few highways in the St. Louis metro area that do not have them as well. The interstate highways have them, but once you start moving towards the suburbs...they disappear unless they were recently redone.

I tried looking at our home owners... Will only cover $250 worth... which is basically pointless. I should have Business insurance but since we are such a start up we are just paying the bills we have.. Lessons learn that's for sure.

I did want to let everone know I have Core 2 Duo CPU's (E8200 E6550 and E6300) in the FS Section. I also have a ton of DDR2 up in the FS Section.

I also have HP workstations that had Opteron 1212 Dual Cores with ECC ddr2 Ram. These are standard ATX Motherboards, with a heatpipe hsf. I thought about doing a special deal for the Mobo, Ram, CPU w/ HSF, and the PSU (also standard ATX) for you guys. I know they aren't the most efficient cpus but if you guys need to do a build on the cheap I could do a good deal. Would anyone be interested in that? These also had Vista Business COA's and if anyone wanted I could mount it back in the case so you can have the license. Most of the front panels got destroyed so it would be a bit of a franken PC but I could do that very cheap. I also have enough ram from machines that got completely mangled to do 7 with 4GB of RAM.

I also parted out alot of the Lenovo's that I got that were M57's. I saved alot of these MOBO's because they have the q35 chipset and support nearly all of the core 2 quads even the 12mb 1333mhz versions. If anyone would be interested in these let me know I also have the Heatsinks clamps etc saved but these are not a standard form factor. I also saved the DELL GX 755 boards and these support C2Q but only the q6600 and q670.

I also have alot of Optiplex GX 370's that are dual DVI (basically a dumbed down 8600GT).

I also have a TON of Optical drives, all SATA, I have DVD-RW Lightscribes, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM CD-RW, and just plain CD-ROMs.

And lastly I have a ton of 80GB SATA HDD, and a few 160GB SATA HDD.

I would rather you guys get some of this stuff and it go to the team, so if you need something let me know. Out of the 121 Computers I have 20-23 that are resellable but will be scratch and dent deals. Most all of these had Vista Business. I can do these for your guys at the best deals I can do.

My Wife goes in on Monday at noon to pin the fracture in her eye socket to keep her eye from sinking as it heals... Hoepfully after that we'll be able to start returning to some kind of normalcy.. I'm just so thankful she is ok.. Don't take the time you have for granted!

thanks guys!
Brandon

[STEvil]

What prices are you looking at on the HDD's and GX370's? My buddy down the street runs a PC refurb business so if he's in need of something i'll let him know the prices. He might be able to use some of the core2duo's and ram as well..

[Fhqwhgads6680]

Hey thanks for your response. If buying 1 HDD I'd probably need $15 just because priority mail is really the only option and that starts at $5 to ship. If he needs multiple I could probably get down to $9-$10 a piece.

For the fx 370's I could do $15 shipped for 1 or down to $10-12 for multiples.

As with anything I need to move this stuff yesterday... so If people need stuff let me know. And if the parts are going to a new cruncher I'll do the best deals I can, I would love to see some of this help the team.

If people are interested, I could do the Opteron, mobo, 4GB ram for $40 shipped and add the PSU for $10. These boards have onboard video, pci-express 16x pci-e 1x, and 2x PCI it has 4x sata ports.

Just let me know.

Thanks!
Brandon

[Sparky]

I'm wishing I had a need for some of these parts but I really don't...

[STEvil]

i'll relay the info, thanks.

[retro77]

Best of luck to the wife on Monday