Jerry Haas may drive Pro Stockers at 200 miles per hour but he learned a lesson about driving I-75 last Thursday. When you’re driving south, don’t lift off the gas pedal because the slower pace does not apply to the freeway.

Haas was delivering a new Chevrolet Cobalt for Kurt Johnson and was slowing for traffic ahead when a driver tending to a new cell phone rear-ended his trailer. He wasn’t hurt but is feeling the after-effects today.

Haas said that he’d slowed to 45 mph while driving in the middle lane to fall in line with traffic ahead of him.

“It hit me so hard that it knocked the cap off of my head,” Haas said. “The back seat of my duallie truck came flying forward. I told the officer that he ought to be glad I am a race car driver because I know how to react. I initially had thought a semi had run into the back of me.”

Haas glanced in his mirrors and saw the carnage behind him. Jerry Haas may drive Pro Stockers at 200 miles per hour but he learned a lesson about driving I-75 last Thursday. When you’re driving south, don’t lift off the gas pedal because the slower pace does not apply to the freeway.

Haas was delivering a new Chevrolet Cobalt for Kurt Johnson and was slowing for traffic ahead when a driver tending to a new cell phone rear-ended his trailer. He wasn’t hurt but is feeling the after-effects today.

Haas said that he’d slowed to 45 mph while driving in the middle lane to fall in line with traffic ahead of him.

“It hit me so hard that it knocked the cap off of my head,” Haas said. “The back seat of my duallie truck came flying forward. I told the officer that he ought to be glad I am a race car driver because I know how to react. I initially had thought a semi had run into the back of me.”

Haas glanced in his mirrors and saw the carnage behind him.

“Everything races through your mind and then I realized my trailer wasn’t attached to my truck any more,” Haas said. “The trailer had dropped down so I got on the brakes real hard. With the safety chains on there I was able to drag it over to the side of the road. I looked down in the floor and wondered what my hat was doing down there.”

Haas said that he was a bit disoriented after the incident and tried to get out without unfastening his seatbelt.

“I climbed out of the car through the passenger side because I was so close to the white line that I didn’t trust the drivers down there,” Haas said. “I looked behind me to see what was back there and no one had stopped. Everybody had just kept on getting it.”

The only person that stopped was the driver that hit him. Both of the other driver’s airbags in his Volvo had deployed. He was uninjured.

Haas received help from a member of the Warren Johnson team to get his truck running again and made the delivery of their Sugar Hill, Georgia-based shop.

“I told the guy that hit me to be thankful that neither one of us rode out of there in an ambulance,” Haas said. “We both walked away and that’s always a plus.”

There was an even larger issue pressing Haas.

“I finally got the nerve to open the trailer,” Haas said. “I looked in the side door and evidently I had secured the car really well because it didn’t move. It only stretched the ties and didn’t put a scratch on the car. God was with me.”

Could the accident have Haas looking at another venue outside of drag racing?

“I told Warren [Johnson] that I am going NASCAR racing,” Haas joked. “You drive down here -- you have to be one. No wonder all of the NASCAR drivers are from down here. You have to be one to drive in the traffic. If the speed limit says 70, then you’d better run 90 to stay out of their way.”

Obviously Haas has never driven the Long Island Expressway before.