Many drivers know to avoid the U.S. 20 bypass in icy conditions but on Tuesday some drivers encountered another hazard on the roadway: sharp shards of metal.
Around noon police say a truck hauling scrap metal was eastbound on the bypass, just west of the State Road 19 exit in Elkhart County, when it started losing its load. The drivers trailing the truck included Susie Schackart, who was driving from her South Bend home to a day of shopping in Shipshewana with her husband Ryan.
“We were in the left lane and this truck just kind of bounces and it looks like it might have hit something, we’re not sure what happened, but then things started flying out of the truck, metal pieces," she recalls. "And my husband was like, ‘What is that?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ So we’re driving and then all of a sudden I’m like, ‘Did we just hit something?’”
Susie, the driver, then realized their tire was flat. Seeing the truck driver wasn’t stopping, she called 911. About 45 minutes later after they had changed the tire, the Schackarts resumed their trip and saw the truck parked on the shoulder.
Elkhart County Sheriff’s Department Capt. Michael Culp said the Schackarts were one of at least seven vehicles whose tires were flattened, and that the truck belonged to an Ohio-based recycling company. Police did not ticket the driver because he had the load covered with a tarp but it shifted when he had to brake hard because a driver cut him off.
”So this was not an issue of negligence on the part of the truck driver," Culp says, "...kind of an unfortunate series of events.”
Still, Susie says she called the company and left a message, requesting they pay for her tire. But she’s also keeping things in perspective.
”Luckily we got through it, like I mean, we just got a flat," she says. "But we could have like had an explosion, we could have like crashed. It could have been a lot of things that happened and thankfully nothing like that happened.”
