On Saturday I was cruising home from Utah after attending a conference. Heading down the I-15 I was enjoying the LDS general conference on the radio as I passed the small town of Mills, UT. As I was driving I was in the fast lane going about 80 miles per hour as I passed this truck pulling one of those mobile offices you see on construction sites. As I start to pass the truck and trailer, the tire off the trailer comes over into my lane right in front of me.

I had enough time to think “Should I swerve?” when my car nailed the tire at 80 MPH on the freeway. I can best describe the experience as my Toyota Sequoia jumping off a tire at 80 MPH. Luckily no one behind me crashed in to me and I was able to keep my car straight and not hit the truck or trailer.

Surprisingly the car actually was driving fine even though I later found out that the right front tire was flat. I pulled over to the side in front of the truck and trailer which also pulled over. The driver of the truck came up to me and asked, “Do you see that tire fly off?” I replied, “Yep. I ran over it.”

Here’s a look at the damage to the car after we’d changed out the tire.

The two guys in the truck were very nice and helped me change my tire to my spare so I could get on my way. The father was quite funny. He just kept saying stuff like, “Oh me oh my.” Luckily I was able to drive it the rest of the way home to Vegas. I did stop in Beaver and get a new tire just to be safe, but the rest of the trip was without incident.

However, when I was changing the tire the guy driving the truck told me, “I’m just glad the tire didn’t bounce up and through your window and kill you.” I’m not sure the proper response to that, but my response was, “Me too.” Turns out this was the second time it’s happened to him and he told me the first time the tire did bounce up and go through the passenger window. No injuries there, but you could tell his comment was talking from first hand experience about what’s possible.

Luckily, no one was injured in the accident. My car will hopefully get fixed (playing phone tag with the insurance company). Life continues to go on. However, the 4 hour drive after such an incident gave me a lot of time to ponder how things might have gone different. It gave me a chance to remember to appreciate life. You never know what it will bring next.