[1] The severe impact on the Impala slammed Eck's seat back on its rails, whipping him like a rag doll. His engine was dead. He tried twisting the steering wheel; it barely budged. The power brakes, too, hardly responded when pressed. He's intentionally ramming me, Eck thought.

[2] Behind him he could hear the whine of the downshifting gears and the snarl of the diesel engine as the truck surged forward. Once more Eck was whiplashed. Now the 18-wheeler was shoving Eck's car up the hill like a hockey player pushing a puck. Without power, steering the Impala was barely possible. Its extra-wide tires created drag on the road; it was like the car was driving through wet concrete.

[3] Gripping his steering wheel with his left hand, Eck punched 911 on his cell phone, a hands-free model with a microphone affixed near the driver's-side sun visor. "I just got rear-ended on 83 three times by a Peterbilt," Eck said, his voice tight with panic. "Can you help me?"

[4] Dispatcher Vincent Brown at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks near Exit 3 questioned the driver about his position. Eck shouted, "I'm being pushed, literally."

[5] Trooper Serell Ulrich was in the station and heard the frantic call. "I'll handle it," Ulrich told Brown. It was about 2:55 p.m.

[6] Ulrich sped onto the I-83 ramp at Exit 3. Farther north, he came upon a rolling roadblock with rubberneckers from the violent truck-car encounter. Traffic in both lanes was clogged. By his clock, the confrontation was over ten minutes long. Could the driver hang on?

[7] Michael Eck was breathing in ragged gasps, trying to keep the Impala in the left lane. The truck driver continued to surge ahead, smashing into the car's rear bumper. Each time the car shuddered from the force. Eck knew that his car couldn't take the punishment much longer. "Where's that officer?" he yelled into the phone.

[8] With the speedometer dead, he estimated they were rolling 40 m.p.h. uphill, 50 on the flats. As he approached Exit 7, escape appeared impossible. The stream of traffic to his right was too thick to change lanes. With a stiff steering wheel and almost no brakes, the task was even harder.

[9] Yet when Eck suddenly saw a break in the right-lane traffic, he seized the chance. Throwing his whole body into it, he yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The car veered into the lane, and Eck's chest heaved with relief. But with a stab of terror, he watched the Peterbilt shift right, too, and felt it slam into him with bone-crunching force.

[10] Eck had lost count of the collisions in his confrontation with the truck. In a shrill voice tinged by desperation, he screamed at Brown over the phone line, "He hit me again."

[11] Boxed in by the traffic, Ulrich finally reached the narrow left shoulder. With only inches of clearance between his car and the concrete barrier, he crawled north. The incident between the driver and trucker was now over 15 minutes in duration.