What to stop for in the middle of the road

My last blog post was about a wreck Chase got in, our totaled car, and the process of buying a new car. It got to be a pretty long post, so I didn't take time to explain WHY the 3-car pile up happened.

As I mentioned in the last post, Chase was the 3rd in a 3-car pile up, meaning he was the back-most car. He was on a 6 lane road (3 lanes going in each direction), that had a median in the middle. He was in the middle lane on his side of the road, and I believe he was accelerating through or just after going through a green light when the two cars in front of him stopped short.

Now, why, you might ask, did the 2 cars stop short? Well the 2nd car stopped short because the first one did, and the first one stopped short because... [wait with bated breath... pregnant pause... anticipation builds... you can barely contain your excitement to hear why she stopped.!.!.!] a flattened cardboard box.

Yes. You read correctly. A flattened cardboard box, quite like those pictured below:

Now had it been a stack of boxes, as in the picture, maybe it would have been explicable... but it wasn't. It was 1 flattened (as in cars had driven over it before and there were marks on the box to prove it) cardboard box.

So this post is to list as many things as I can think of that one SHOULD stop for in the middle of the road. I'll have you all notice the absence of "flattened cardboard box" from the list:

1. A baby in a carriage - duh.
2. Humans in general- duh again.
3. A pig - my driver's ed instructor said never to hit a pig, in particular, because it's highly likely, so he said, to total your car AND you'll probably get high-centered on the pig so you won't be able to get out of the road. Probably pigs aren't a big concern where we live now, but sage advice none the less.
4. A cow - my older brother and Dad have totaled cars because of cows. Not fun.
5. A horse
6. A family of geese or ducks
7. Your neighbor's dog or cat
8. A row of spikes (like they use in the TV show COPS)
9. A roadblock - it's likely that the road is blocked for a reason, so one should stop

10. An elephant or other exotic animal

11. A fallen tree
12. A red light
13. A piece of furniture - around here things like that fall out of people's trucks as they're moving, so sometimes you see mattresses or chairs or whatever.
14. A stop sign

15. A school bus
16. A wrecked car
17. A cop - if a cop's in the road and you don't stop, you'll have BIG problems.

18. A snow drift - On our second date when I was a freshman in high school, Chase tried to drive his parent's van through a snow drift and ended up getting it high-centered on a less-than-fluffy-snow-and-more-like-ice-snowdrift.

19. A ball bouncing out into the road - because there's likely a small child following the ball.

20. _______________ [fill in the blank with whatever obscure thing you've seen in the road that you've had to stop for]

Again, notice the dearth of flattened cardboard boxes in the list. Just log this away for a rainy day: if you stop for a flattened cardboard box in the road, expect to be rearended and cause mayhem for other drivers on the road.

*Sigh* Sorry for the rant. I feel much better now that it's out of my system.