Giant Wire Spool Rolls Down A Motorway

“I love to go a-wandering, along the mountain track.
And as I go, I love to sing, my knapsack on my back.”Show more

And so sings a giant spool of cable that thinks it’s a happy wanderer, because when you’re the biggest wheel on the freeway, you couldn’t care less about what all those economy cars think. As the unsinkable Molly Brown might have said as she watched the Titanic sliding into the black abyss, “There’s something you don’t see every day.”

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and they weren’t lying! If that’s some kind of heavy duty copper cable, then it must be many tons of car crushing power. Let’s face it, we are humored and awed at the same time. A giant wheel of cable respects no laws of man. If it wants to roll the wrong way down a freeway, who’s going to stop it? Even “Bigfoot”, the famous monster truck might tuck its tailgate between its rear wheels and run away.

This capture was simply amazing, and we can only imagine the shock of seeing this event for yourself in real life. Where did the roll come from? Well, it happened during the lunch time rush in Houston on Interstate 10, Friday, October 26, 2018. Nobody was injured, thankfully. We don’t know how many nightmares it caused, however.

“I don’t want to die like this,” reported one eye witness, whose Volkswagen Beetle was sideswiped by the lumbering behemoth. Marie Cervantez was driving by a big flatbed rig carrying spools on I-10 when she heard a cable snap. The spool on the

truck hit a bridge, and like a poultry truck losing its chickens, at long last the spool was free!

The spool rolled backward for about a hundred yards, and to its credit, impressively staying mostly in its own lane. Then it came to a stop, with the backed up traffic in its path respectfully giving it a wide berth. We can’t say “amazing” enough to describe the surreal sight, and the complete lack of human s physically harmed by the feral spool.

This was big news in east Texas at the time. No news agency could resist reporting on it. It’s hard to imagine that the driver of the rig carrying the spool, or the company responsible for its transport got away Scott free without at least a fine. It may be funny now, but this could have been much more serious. It’s like some supernatural force—whether above or below, does have a sense of humor. It’s also fun to anthropomorphize the inanimate when objects seem to have a mind of their own, as this spool seems to have. It behaves in much the same way as bulls, horses, or even camels in those videos we see of livestock evading capture on the highway
.

“Expect the unexpected, Grasshopper,” said Master Po, especially when driving. This is also a good lesson for keeping your eyes on the road, and not on your smartphone.