Thanks to good reflexes and quick thinking, the driver of a bottled water delivery truck managed to avoid a potentially tragic collision after the vehicle’s brakes failed near the busy intersection of the Libramiento and the Chapala-Ajijic highway.
The incident occurred Monday, September 19, around 7:45 a.m., the rush hour for many local motorists heading to work or droping off their children at school.
Speaking calmly to the Reporter as he watched a tow truck retrieve his vehicle, the 26-year-old driver said that realized he was in trouble as he approached the traffic light coming off the bypass. Recognizing the imminent danger, he managed to veer off the roadway, narrowly missing the monolithic Ajijic welcome sign as he crashed through a chain link fence into the grounds of the Flora Exotica nursery.
“I’m thankful there were only material damages and no one was injured,” he remarked, pointing out that he has regular driver training in the two and a half years he has worked as a Pepsi chauffer.
The Libramiento junction has been the site of numerous prior accidents involving large trucks that have lost their brakes on the downhill stretch. Although traffic authorities at one time considered installing an emergency escape ramp just ahead of that point, the proposed remedy has yet to be carried out.
A bottled water delivery man avoided a close call with tragedy when the brakes of his truck failed just meters away from the area’s most perilous intersection.