At the end of the highway across the lake is the original bridge over the Trinity River. Immediately after the bridge, the road rises sharply, climbing the bluff above the Trinity’s riverbed. This sharp upturn makes visibility a problem for drivers in both directions.
This was my first time to see the bridge, and it looked curiously out of place. I have no idea of the span, but the bridge is quite long. It’s an old bridge with a massive, rusty steel superstructure. Other than the immediate road ahead, I could see little, and I certainly didn’t glimpse any other traffic. It was a dangerous bridge, and as I would learn later, several accidents had occurred on it. (Although no longer used, the bridge is still there. The state built another one beside it.)
I drove at about fifty miles an hour because it was, for me, uncharted territor y. I braced my shoulders against the chill inside the car. The wind made the morning seem even colder than it was. The steady rain had turned into a cloudburst. I would be happy to finally reach Alvin again. About 11:45 A.M., just before I cleared the east end of the bridge, an eighteen-wheeler driven by an inmate, a trusty at the Texas Department of Corrections, weaved across the center line and hit my car headon. The truck sandwiched my small car between the bridge railing and the driver’s side of the truck. All those wheels went right on top of my car and smashed it.
I remember par ts of the accident, but most of my information came from the accident report and people at the scene.
From the description I’ve received from witnesses, the truck then veered off to the other side of the narrow bridge and sideswiped two other cars. They were in front of the truck and had already passed me going in the opposite direction. The police record says that the truck was driving fast—at least sixty miles an hour—when it struck my car.
The inexperienced driver finally brought the truck to a stop almost at the end of the bridge.
A young Vietnamese man was in one vehicle that was hit, and an elderly Caucasian man was in the other. Although shaken up, both drivers suffered only minor cuts and bruises. They refused help, so the paramedics transpor ted neither man to the hospital.
Because of the truck’s speed, the accident report states that the impact was about 110 miles an hour. That is, the truck struck me while going sixty miles an hour, and I was carefully cruising along at fifty. The inmate received a citation for failure to control his vehicle and speeding. Information later came out that the inmate wasn’t licensed to drive the truck. At the prison, supervisors had asked for volunteers to drive their truck to pick up food items and bring them back. Because he was the only volunteer, they let him drive their supply truck.
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