Nothing to get a good adrenaline rush going on the routine drive home (I drove today…too hot to walk these past two days…) like suddenly seeing a street light fall over onto the cars in front of you. 

I was stopped at a light along 40th street near the Rotunda, a large old brick Baltimore office building that’s been converted to stores and offices.  I was listening to Signorile on Sirius OutQ and waiting for traffic in front of me to start moving.  Then I see this big city streetlight on my side of the road, tip over in a long slow arc across the road several cars ahead of me.  It crashed down with a loud bang on the roof of a car in the oncoming traffic.  Because of the cars in front of me I couldn’t tell whether it had hit any of the cars ahead of me or not.

Imagine…you’re driving home from work and just…out of the fucking blue…a street light comes crashing down on top of your car.  The driver of the car that got hit probably didn’t even see it coming.  He’s looking ahead of him and just all of a sudden there’s this loud bang on the roof and the roof is buckling on on him and his windows are being smashed.

Before traffic had a chance to snarl I swung my car out of the line and down a side street and parked.  Then I walked back to the scene.   People were already taking care of the driver of the car that got hit and calling for an ambulance.  He looked cut on his arm but otherwise not badly hurt.  Just…stunned.  The windows on the driver’s side of his car were all smashed out and the roof of the car was badly, I mean really badly, dented in.  I was thinking as I looked at it that it was a good thing the light hadn’t fallen on a pedestrian.  There are two old folks homes near that scene and you see old people slowly walking up and down that sidewalk all the time.  On the other side of that street is a Giant Food grocery store and all the other Rotunda stores and that sidewalk usually has pedestrians on it, even very late at night.  It seemed unduly lucky that right at that moment there hadn’t been anyone walking nearby.

There was another car on the other side of the street further up that didn’t look to my eye like it was damaged, but it’s driver was carefully looking over the side of the car I couldn’t see so there might have been something.  Broken glass from the car that got hit and the street light was all over the street. 

There was a Baltimore Gas and Electric utility truck parked on the sidewalk where the street light had been.  It looked like they’d been trying to maneuver the truck into position to do some utility work and had knocked over a bus stop and the street light in the process.  But I didn’t actually see it happen so that’s just a guess based on what I saw.  The bus stop was right next to where the street light was and it was bent over under the front bumper of the truck.  How the driver didn’t see it or the street light I haven’t a clue.

A few seconds later and that street light might have hit me.