The Day My Life Flashed Before My Eyes.

That's today.  It really did, my life that is, flashing before my eyes.  And I'm not even being excessively dramatic.

Thirty minutes ago, I was exiting the freeway, using the offramp at 114th South in Draper.  You might know it.  The offramp is long-ish, and has a bit of a curve to it before it ends with a stoplight.  I was driving along, singing a song and admiring what a good hair day I'm having.  Behind me, I saw a dump truck that looked something like this:

So I came to the stop light, in the left lane, and had been stopped there for at least 10 or so seconds.  I casually glanced in my left side mirror.  To my terror, I saw the dumptruck right behind me, veering off to the left, onto the shoulder just beneath the offramp.  He came to a stop about almost directly beside me, having jumped over a curve and gone into the shoulder. 

I don't know if he wasn't paying attention to the red light at the bottom of the ramp, or if his brakes weren't reacting very well, but he felt the need to go off the side of the road in order to avoid rear ending me and sending me straight into the path of on-coming traffic.

It took me about 10 minutes to get my heartbeat back to a normal range, I couldn't believe how close I came to getting squished like a little baby dirt clod. 

I drew this little illustration myself.  Rudimentary, I know, but I love visuals.  I'm the green spot and the dumptruck is the blue smear.  And the black lines are the road.  FYI.