'I don't want to die like that!' Driver says runaway spool sideswiped her car in Houston
HOUSTON -- Not all of the people who drove past a large spool seen rolling down the East Freeway on Thursday were able to dodge it.
Marie Cervantez was cruising on the freeway in her Volkswagen Beetle right before the spool of fiber optic cable broke loose.
The dash cam on Cervantez's car shows a flatbed with two spools on her right, but as she passes it, you faintly hear the spool snap off.
Cervantez says she heard a loud crash and realized it hit a bridge, sending one spool into traffic.
That's the part of this story that many Houstonians will probably recognize since the spool tumbled down I-10 near Wayside during the lunchtime rush.
What you may not know is that a car was hit, and it belongs to Cervantez.
She pulled over to check her bug, that she lovingly calls Bocho. It wasn't until she looked at it that she realized the spool hit her back bumper.
"Luckily, nobody got hit from that. Everybody stopped. But I kept going! Because I didn't know it hit me, until I noticed it," Cervantez explained.
"I'm not afraid to die, but I don't want to die like that!" Driver's encounter with runaway spool
She says she's glad no one was hurt, but she did notice something else on the freeway that bothered her.
"I noticed on the freeway that a lot of people are texting. It's not good. Because this can happen and they're not going to be aware, you know. So they better quit texting," Cervantez said.
Cervantez says she's putting a dash cam in the back of her car now, too.
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