Traveling north yesterday for nine days of vacation, we hit some road debris on I-65 near Merrillville, IN that destroyed one of our beautiful allow wheels and its tire.

We immediately contacted Allstate for roadside service as cars and trucks whipped by us, buffeting us, as we sat on the left shoulder. Soon we were being quoted a 70 minute wait for assistance — in a major population center (Chicago commuters).

Then we saw a truck pull up about 10 minutes later. There was a pause (maybe checking our license plate or something) and a man approached.

It was a free “Hoosier Helper Incident Response Technician” and helper, sponsored by the state Department of Transportation and insurers (Geico in our case. They helped us unload our luggage, extracted the space-saver spare, inflated it to 60 psi, swapped it out for the ruined tire and wheel, put the damaged goods in the back of our SUV, helped reload luggage, and had us on our way about 50 minutes after we hit the debris.

Shout-out to Hiram G and Bryan C for a dandy job — and to INDOT and insurers for realizing the wisdom of something like this in a select few high-traffic highways around the state.