I guess chem trails might be able to kill
August 31st, 2008
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I may have to change my stand on something, because I witnessed a situation where “chemtrails” – intentionally spread chemicals from an airplane could have honestly killed someone. In this case, however, the chemical involved was special effects smoke, which is used for skywriting.
This occurred while I was driving approaching the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, commonly known as the “Q-Bridge” in New Haven Connecticut. I was driving south on Interstate-95 on the ramp to the bridge, a three lane bridge over the Quinipiac River, about 150-200 feet below. As I drove I saw a plane skywriting a message. This is the second time in as many weeks that I’ve seen skywriting and I have not seen it in this area before, so I can only assume some local pilot has been offering the service in the area.
This time the message was different. I couldn’t read the whole thing but it seemed to say “SUMMER FUN AT…..”The rest I could not read as I was driving. But others infront of me seemed to be making more of an effort, because a number of cars started to slow down or drift into the wrong lane. I could see drivers leaning and looking when they should have been looking at the road.
Then this is where the near death comes in: About 150 yards in front of me, a car swerved. It was a full-sized green car of a medium to large size, perhaps a 1980’s Ford Taurus or other full sized car. The driver seemed to have drifted uncomfortably close to the median of the highway and then suddenly realizing it, pulled away, overcompensating and skidding out. The best way to describe the maneuver would be about half of a bootleg turn. At least two cars also skidded by slamming the breaks to avoid this guy. Other cars had to hit their breaks or swerve to avoid hitting the original car or any of the other cars that had been forced to stop.
It was kind of like this:
So, the moral of the story: Apparently it is possible for trails from an airplane to kill. It didn’t this time. An accident was narrowly avoided, but for christ sake keep your eyes on the road, people!
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 12:14 am and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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August 31st, 2008 at 1:30 am
Don’t you have attractive nuisance laws in your area?
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August 31st, 2008 at 9:27 am
Ah the age old rubberneck syndrome, this can also be caused by other car accidents. Or’big’ things (eg. the big banana, the big prawn, even the big potato). Or, occasionally, small things (eg. miniskirts, unusually large people walking unusually small dogs).
Unfortunately there is no known cure for the rubberneck syndrome, and anyone could catch the affliction at anytime so stay alert (but not alarmed).
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August 31st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Dalyn85 said:
Yeah, a few years ago I saw a similar situation where people were looking out the window and drifting or even slamming on breaks to avoid hitting cars which were slowing down or drifting. This was while I was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in a relatively mundane area until there was suddenly a very large brush fire with flames probably 30 feet high about 400 yards away from the highway (far enough that there was no immediate danger to the highway and separated by area without brush. The smoke wasn’t blowing toward the highway either)
It was pretty cool looking though. The flames were high and there were fire trucks that were just arriving on the scene and scrambling to control the blaze. Actually I think there may have been a helicopter too. So that kind of thing is pretty damn distracting.
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August 31st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
DV82XL said:
Probably. I don’t know if this would qualify. It wasn’t directed at the traffic, I’m sure. More likely it was directed at the parks and beaches in the area. It might qualify anyway because it’s near a major highway but I’m not sure anyone would have thought to go after them for this.
I’ve seen banner-towers in the area plenty of times.
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August 31st, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Reminds me of this video
(warning, borderline NSFW, depending on where you work, but not anything really bad)
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August 31st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Not chemtrails but just bad driving.
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August 31st, 2008 at 4:21 pm
You might, as someone who has driven over the Q bridge hundreds of times including as recently as Friday add that the bridge is dangerous at the best of times, with intersection on the bridge, crossing traffic, tight guardrails, wild drivers, really bad pavement and the exciting if rather predictable possibility of a spontaneous traffic jam. All this and the real, if slight chance that the whole bridge might just fall down and its just one of the things to make a daily commute exciting. Not the kind of place you ever want to take your eyes off the road for any reason.
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August 31st, 2008 at 8:02 pm
J Carlton said:
Oh yes. I’ve seen two of the most extreme accidents I’ve ever witnessed right on the Q-bridge. One was someone hit the divider where the ramp for I-91 north separates dead on with the front of the hood and flames were coming out from the hood. The guy got out, but I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. I’d expect steam and coolant from the radiator, but the damn thing erupted in fire. It was an old junker of a car.
The other thing I saw was I was driving along coming north over the Q late at night (maybe 2 AM coming back from something) and I saw an SUV upside down on the roof with the windows and the windshield smashed and the roof only slightly caved in sitting right in the center lane about 20 feet short of the apex of the bridge. Surrounded by “pebbles” of tempered glass and with two people sitting next to it, apparently okay but looking a bit shocked. There was a car a bit further down that had been badly T-boned but the driver was out and on his cell phone. This had JUST happened, because the cops were not there, traffic had not slowed down or anything. I guess the SUV must have hit the car really damn heard to go over on the roof. It must have been dramatic, but I was about two minutes too late to see it. No cops or anything and I even rolled down my window and asked if they were okay. One of them waved me off, so it looked like nobody was hurt. By the time I got to the end of the bridge there were police speeding to the site with the lights and siran on. But man.. they could have gone off the side.
Yes the bridge is in sad shape. It was to be replaced long ago, but I guess the state hasn’t found any contractors who will take the job. We experienced some trouble a few years ago when some contractors were dismissed for having paid off the governor (who last I checked, was still in federal prison).
A couple years ago, they built some very large embankments of dirt and wired bails of gravel, which I believe are/were supposed to be phase one of building ramps for the new bridge. They’ve sat there for two years at least and now they’re overgrown with grass and weeds.
Every once in a while the bridge is closed for emergency repairs when a chunk of concrete falls off. It’s unsettling.
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August 31st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Okay, I guess those qualify as “chem trails” because they are an intentionally emitted chemical of a sort and I guess that would be an example of a danger, but I’m not about to call that chemtrails like the CT’ers believe since the purpose is obvious and there’s no conspiracy. Also, the danger is just that it’s a distraction for drivers and not anything special to the skywriting.
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August 31st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Isn’t I-95 one of the biggest interstate highways and the major route up the east coast from Florida all the way to Maine and also a major route to cities like Boston and New York?
That’s very disturbing that a bridge would be allowed to fall into disrepair. Especially because of that big bridge collapse a couple of months ago.
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