Confessions of a Sanitation Worker

Brian French was nearly crushed to death by a trash collection truck during a routine garbage run last winter. French was forced to react much faster than anyone should ever have to at 4 a.m. "I hopped over the hood of a parked car and slid off the side. I was lucky," says French, a sanitation worker of five years.

French had just stepped a few feet off the curb into the street with four oversized black trash bags in his hands. The driver had been blocking a driveway, and when he backed up to allow someone out, he failed to notice that French was walking towards the back of the garbage truck.