Don't tailgate

Last night I had a very, very scary thing happen that fortunately didn't hurt anybody or anything. I try to always keep a safe distance between me and the person in front of me and boy did that habit pay off last night. There was a flatbed about 3/4 mile in front of me that I initially thought blew a tire--big bang with lots of sparks. Well, he didn't slow down and the sparks were continuing to come at me!! It was dark and I was far enough behind him that I couldn't tell if he'd ran over something or if he'd lost something off his trailer. It turned out to be a giant metal elbow abut the size of a recliner, I was doing some heavy-duty braking and turning on my four-ways so the cars behind me would know to slow down. Thankfully, the 3 four-wheelers behind me realized there was something going on and were slowing down with me and not trying to pass me, if that elbow had hit one of those cars it would've totalled it. Fortunately the elbow bounced just right and ended up on the shoulder out of the roadway next to us. Meanwhile, I'm on the c.b. trying to get the driver to slow down because he'd lost part of his load but he didn't have his radio on. He passed another truck that finally got his attention to let him know that one of his binders was loose and the driver had the nerve to gripe about nobody telling him sooner that he'd lost something. I came back and told him that I'd tried several times to let him know and the idiot admitted at that point that he had his radio turned off. Grrrrr!!!!!!! I'm not sure why he didn't see the big shower of sparks just behind him when it happened, it was putting on a show that rivaled the firewarks at the Travs game last Saturday night. Okay, I don't need to get started on people that never look in their mirrors.