Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and, the X1/9 being quite a small, short car, there was plenty of room between the tract-
or unit hauling the thing and the double set of axles at the rear. Back then there were no
safety barrier rails hanging underneath long trucks to stop cars submarining underneath
in a side-on crash and so decapitating their occupants, so Dave just swung the car half-
underneath the truck (his side was still in the sunlight), waited for the traffic island to
disappear astern, then swung back out again and completed the overtake.
Is there anybody out there reading this who fails to understand what an act of utter
insanity this really was? It surely can't just be me. I've tackled McCartney on this a dozen
times or more and every time Dave protests loudly that it was a perfectly safe and even
sensible thing to do. He's a persuasive arguer as well, the swine, and a few times I've al-
most found myself agreeing with him, but never quite.
'McCartney,
I'm
fucking crazy, but I'd never do that!'
'Well, that's just you being blinkered. It was the rational response at the time.'
'What are you talking about?'
'I could see really clearly there was loads of room, because the roof was off. I prob-
ably wouldn't have done it if there had been somebody else in the passenger's seat; they
might have got upset, but there wasn't. So I did.'
'What if the truck driver had seen you?'
'Maybe he did.'
'How could he have? If he had he'd have done what any rational person would have
done and braked on instinct, panicking because he's just seen a nutter drive under his
truck! You'd have ploughed into the tractor unit's rear tyres, bounced off again and then
the rear trailer axles would have rolled right over you! You'd have been paste!'
'Aye, but it didn't happen, did it?'
'But it could have!'
'But it didn't. I don't know what you're getting so upset about.'
'I'm not upset! I just think you're crazy but you won't admit it.'
'It wasn't crazy; it was a perfectly good bit of overtaking with a sort of wiggle in the
middle. You'd have done the same.'
'That's my point! I wouldn't!'
'How do you know?'
'Because it's a patently insane and crazy thing to do!'
'Why?'
'Dave;
you drove under a truck
.'
'Well, put like that …'
And so on.
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