To the People Driving Behind Us in Arkansas Yesterday, I’m Sorry!

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I was in a hurry and we were negligent!

Let me tell you what led up to this apology. Yesterday, some friends and I took off early in the morning for a quick day trip to Arkadelphia, Arkansas. We love to go tubing/floating on the Caddo River. We generally float from just south of the dam down to the take-out point roughly four miles downriver at River Rats. It was so hot that we had to stop and get into the water to cool off about every half mile. It sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm truly not. I'm just setting the stage. Because I drive a truck, we usually take it on trips like this to stow everyone's equipment. Well, by the time we got off the river, we were done. The heat had sucked up every bit of energy we had.

By the time we had hauled everything we brought with us up the riverbank, I decided to take mercy on my fellow adventurers and go get my truck so no one would have to haul anything any further in the heat. Long story short, I was responsible for tying down everything safely in my truck's bed. Between my kayak, paddles, and our tubes for floating, coolers, etc... we had a lot of stuff. I'm ashamed to say I didn't tie down one of the big tubes securely. This means that someone on I-30 had a big purple and gold tube come flying at them while they were driving on the interstate and for that I'm sorry. I'm sure the fact that the flying debris was in LSU colors just added insult to injury in Razorback territory.

I am sorry! All I can do is promise that I won't let it happen again. I was ready to get on the road, soak up some blessed air conditioning and get home! My friend Tracey drove back and she even asked me if everything was tied down well and I assured her it was. I pray we didn't cause an accident!

With that in mind, I wanted to look up my legal liability with regard to unsecured items in the bed of my truck and yes, if you have objects that aren't fully secured, it's on you! According to AAA via Justice4You.com, more than 50,000 accidents occur yearly due to road debris with 1 in 5 of those accidents resulting in an injury. Long story short, tie everything down and then put a double knot on top of that. You can't be too careful!