{"id":24734,"date":"2011-01-24T10:19:17","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T10:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2011\/01\/24\/things-blowing-up-and-burning\/"},"modified":"2011-01-24T10:19:17","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T10:19:17","slug":"things-blowing-up-and-burning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/things-blowing-up-and-burning\/","title":{"rendered":"Things blowing up and burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may or may not have heard the news: There was a major explosion, or set of explosions, with suicide bombers and everything, 31 or more dead, at the Moscow Airport. The details are sketchy. <\/a><\/p>\n

And in a totally unrelated story, but still with an explosion, then there’s this:<\/p>\n

\"i-d6bd8064ea00e023b0c4b8bc420cba3f-TruckOnFireOn10-35w_ramp.jpg\"
\n
\nGod’s Highway<\/a>, I 35w, is famous for the fact that it winds back and forth through Minneapolis. There is one cruve that requires drivers to slow down to about 35 mph. This is a major interstate. On a different turn, which is not as tight, a semi truck fell over about 10 years ago and landed on a man and his young son who happened to be “downhill” from the truck. They were crushed to death.<\/p>\n

Ever since then, I’ve been careful to not be downhill (on the outside of the curve) passing or being passed by semi truck or tankers on this road or any of its on or off ramps. I think it matters that many truckers coming into this area have likely spend the last several hours on straight and flat highways. I see them going a little too fast on the curves, sometimes.<\/p>\n

And, I’m sure there are those who think my careful avoidance of being next to a truck on any of these curves is unnecessary, that the aggregate chances of my being fallen on by a truck are very low, bla bla bla.<\/p>\n

One of those curves is the too-tight ramp from the 65 mph highway Route 10 onto the 65 mph part of Gods’ Highway (35W). This is the most commonly used ramp in my own commuting and travels, the location I check before I leave the house to see if it is clear. My sense of dread was vindicated last year when the Department of Transportation modified the ramp a little to make it safer. A little My sense of dread is further vindicated every time there’s a slippery storm … this is one of the places the SUV’s and minivans go off the road pretty much every time.<\/p>\n

But my feelings were especially vindicated (or confirmation biased, maybe) this morning when the above depicted event happened. That’s a tanker truck burning out of control after tipping over exactly where my car would have been, had I been driving into town this morning and not avoided being next to trucks.<\/p>\n

Close call!<\/p>\n

Drive safely and have a nice day.<\/p>\n


\nHere’s the story. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may or may not have heard the news: There was a major explosion, or set of explosions, with suicide bombers and everything, 31 or more dead, at the Moscow Airport. The details are sketchy. And in a totally unrelated story, but still with an explosion, then there’s this:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-6qW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}