You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Wrong Way Driver.
Life is a gift.
We spend so much time planning for the future and we forget to take stock in the right now.
Golfer Walter Hagen reportedly said “Stop and smell the roses.”
It means take time to notice things around you. Don’t worry so much. Live your life right now.
I bet a thousand or more motorists are thinking that very thought this evening after what happened to them recently.
Imagine driving along the interstate at 75mph. It’s 1:15 in the morning. It’s dark, you are probably tired. The good news? There are few cars on the interstate with you.
The bad news?
Those high beams coming right at you.
It’s jarring, unsettling, hard to believe.
It’s not the red brake lights you’re use to, that you’ve been following forever. Those are tranquil, almost like an illuminated sedative
No, these lights are not calming. They are visual crack and they are growing bigger, more concerning, coming right at you like a ferocious run-a-way train in tunnel.
What the hell is that? you say edging forward in your driver’s seat.
You see the Lights. They are blaring, they are brighter, they are growing bigger.
It’s concerning, frightening.
SWERVE, BRAKE, PANIC.
VROOOOM
WTF?
You grip the steering wheel with both hands. Your pulse is racing, your pressure boiling, your fight or flight mechanism set to high.
You have just escaped death. You have just driven by a car barrel assing at you the wrong way on the interstate at 80 miles an hour.
What was it doing in the southbound lane of northbound traffic?
You will never know that answer.
You only know that you could’ve died and you are frightened and need to let someone know.
As you dial 911, you think about what a head on collision would feel like.
You doing 75 mph, the other car hitting you head on at 80 miles an hour.
It would be like crumpling a piece of tin foil in your hand and then setting it on fire in a bucket of scalding grease.
Would anything survive?
“911 what’s your emergency?”
And so it begins.
A night of driving insanity where dozens, perhaps thousands of motorists are put in rolling jeopardy on the asphalt.
I have the 911 calls. There are more than a dozen of them.
“He’s driving 80 miles an hour.”
“The SUV was coming right at me.”
“If I didn’t swerve we would have hit him head on.”
“He’s driving the wrong way in the North Bound lane of the interstate.”
“Oh My God!”
“What the F***, he’s going to kill someone!”
The calls are all the same.
One motorist after the next. Each caller breathless, scared, realizing that life can end in the blink of an eye at 1:15 am in the fast lane of I-65.
This is my story today.
What caused a man to drive for 20 minutes and 20 miles against traffic in the wrong lane of traffic?
How did it begin? What was he thinking? How did he not run head first into anyone or anything?
Thankfully the man was stopped and miraculously, nobody was hurt.
The 911 calls helped police figure out where the driver had been. But at 80 mph, by the time the call concluded and the information disseminated to the police, the location had changed.
You can hear in the radio traffic the difficulty the Metro Police are having in catching up to the vehicle driving the wrong way.
Once the TDOT operators join the chase everything changes.
The Wrong Way Driver was stopped in part because of operators at the Tennessee Department of Transportation HQ who were able to track the wrong way driver with real-time cameras.
“He’s in the construction zone on I-65,” they would relay to police cars who now had an exact time frame of where this driving menace was.
Armed with a massive video board with the ability to look at traffic cameras from 20 locations at once, the operators followed the crazy man from one highway quadrant to the next.
In real time, the TDOT operators were able to predict where the man would be instead of where he was.
It took close to half an hour of weaving and bobbing and trying to intercept a 2000 pound speeding bullet, but in the end, the man stopped. He eventually pulled over, was surrounded by a phalanx of lawmen and taken into custody without incident.
As you would suspect, the man was under the influence.
Drugs? Alcohol? Perhaps both.
He was charged with DUI and possession of pot. His breathalyzer was twice the legal limit.
It’s a frightening, compelling story.
I have the 911 tapes, I have the TDOT people praising emergency responders.
What I don’t have is the driver himself.
I wonder if he would talk?
You don’t know unless you go.
I have his address so I go.
1200 Main Street is a 1000 unit apartment complex.
I look at the arrest report. 1200 Main Street.
That’s it
No unit number, no apartment number, no building number.
Finding the Wrong Way Driver will be like finding a marble in a trash heap in Jew Jersey.
I know that the man was driving a white SUV. I know the make and I know the year.
Armed only with that, we begin to drive through the parking lots.
There are thousand of spots in this massive apartment complex.
80% of the slots are empty.
“People are all at work,” I tell my camera man.
We drive around buildings.
We drive beside buildings.
We stop and wonder, which direction to go.
We pull into a random parking lot.
“Is that it?” my photographer says suddenly pointing at a white SUV?”
“No, that’s a Ford product,” I respond.
We drive around for 5 more minutes, maybe 10.
Space after space looks the same. White SUV’s by the score parked in front of buildings that all look the same.
It’s like trying to find a specific shell on a beach full of shells.
We pull into another section of the building that looks like every other we’ve just been in.
We pull in to take a closer look at a white SUV in the parking spot.
“Could that be it?”
As we drive behind the SUV I feel a twinge.
It’s that moment when it’s better to be lucky than good, a place I’ve been many times before.
“Kenny, I think this is it.”
Before we can relish that thought, Kenny responds.
“I think that’s your guy on the balcony.”
“Huh?”
I didn’t expect to hear those words.
“The mug shot you are holding in your lap; I think that’s him on the upstairs balcony.”
I feel a jolt of energy surge through my news synaptic system.
We pull in. I lean forward-looking at my side view mirror. The image is small, but promising. I see a man sitting on a balcony smoking a cigarette.
I jump out, my iPhone video camera rolling.
I walk to the base of the building and look up to the 2nd floor.
I ask the man if he is the wrong way driver.
Amazingly, he says he is.
at 1st he says he would rather not talk.
I know I have to get him to come off the 2nd floor balcony.
I give him the hard sell.
“Sir, I already know what their point of view is. They say you were drunk, twice the legal limit. I’ve heard a dozen 911 calls. You scared the hell out of people. You can say no comment, but I’m going to then be forced to devote my whole story to law enforcement and zero time to you.”
The man scratches his head, and then snuffs out his cigarette.
“I’ll be right down,” he says.
I look back to Kenny who has been documenting this entire encounter from the parking lot.
I smile. “Unbelievable. He’s coming down.”
The wrong way driver approaches. He is mild mannered and thin. He has a well-kept beard and a receding hair line. He shakes my hand and he’s cordial. But he’s nervous, anxious.
I look at the mug shot in my hand. I look at the man beside me.
It’s go time
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He tells me that he would rather not talk about the incident, preferring to 1st tell his story to the judge.
I tell him that the story is airing in 5 hours and his input is necessary to tell a fair and balanced story.
He pauses, unsure how to proceed.
I try another tactic.
“I can tell you don’t feel good about the charges against you?”
It’s not so much a question as a nudge to bare his soul.
He wants to cleanse his conscience.
He is cautious, but honest.
He admits to driving, but he won’t elaborate how or why he was driving the wrong way at close to 100mph.
He shocks me when he says he is glad the police stopped him, he is appreciative of their efforts, and he is glad that nobody was hurt.
He is a rare offender who stands up to the white-hot glare of the accusations and answers honestly.
We get in the news car and Kenny high fives me with a big smile.
We both realize that the interview is rare. The fact we even found the guy, even more unbelievable.
We know we have a lead story as we drive away.
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.
Life’s Crazy™