Don't be a moron, you moron!!!!!!!

Yesterday some moron from Missouri made our lives miserable, made thousands of people's lives miserable, got a passenger in his car minorly mauled and caused a major environmental catastrophe.

If you live in Minnesota you probably know what I'm talking about. A man driving on Route 94 out by Alberville missed his exit. Thinking that his time was more important than anyone else's time (or lives) he pulled a nice slow u-turn with his underpowered suburban station wagon, crossing the path of an oncoming gasoline tanker. He took out the tanker. Thousands of gallons of gasoline were spilled on the median, and traffic on 94, which is the main transportation artery in the area, was shut down in both directions for nine hours.

Amanda and I were driving towards the airport from up north to pick up Julia who was expected back from Washington DC. We were not on that highway, but rather, ten miles away or so on the parallel highway to which all of the end-of-weekend traffic was diverted. (We don't have a lot of roads in Minnesota, comparatively.) For hours.

Warning to Minnesotans and anyone who comes to Minnesota over the next few weeks: The State Patrol has vowed to crack down on this particular violation over coming weeks.

So go ahead. Make our day ...

More like this

When I visited Shanghai a few years ago, one of my favorite moments was riding the maglev train from the airport to a Metro station on the outskirts of the city. As I recall, its speed got up to around 250 mph - a counter in each car displayed the speed, and the numbers changed in a blur as the…
You always hope this happens, but it never does. But every now and then JUSTICE PREVAILS! So, we're driving north on 371 just out of Baxter. Amanda, who is an excellent driver, is at the wheel. Moderate traffic, overcast but no precipitation, just before nightfall. Suddenly, from the corner of…
UPDATE (March 2017): At the time that Samaras, his son, and his colleague, were crushed to death inside their tornado-chasing car, which was apparently rolled by the force of 200-300 mile an hour winds over a distance of a half mile or so, it was said by numerous news sources that this car had been…
I drove down to NYC yesterday to have dinner with some of my ScienceBlogs colleagues, and put faces to names. Seven or eight years ago, I probably would've driven back that night, but I'm old and settled, so I shelled out for a hotel room the size of our spare bedroom (maybe 9' square), and drove…

Wow, such a stupid idea. I know someone who had to have her whole face reconstructed and her boyfriend died when he tried a similar time-saving u-turn.

A couple of points:
1.) "Moron from Missouri" is redundent.
2.) Give the driver a Darwin Award, and a hearty thanks for improving the breed through removal of what is clearly a defective decision-making gene form the gene pool.

I see morons like that every day; my truckie buddies tell me they see thousands of them every day. There's no shortage of idiots who are happy to kill people in an attempt to save 1 or 2 minutes.

By MadScientist (not verified) on 14 Jul 2009 #permalink