Taking the wheel when drivers can’t face the Chesapeake Bay Bridge alone
Sharon Ford knew there was one thing standing between her and her Memorial Day beach destination in Delaware — the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
Standing at the foot of the bridge, waiting for the service that would take the wheel for her to get across the bridge, she told WTOP, “Like right now, just looking at the bridge, my hands are sticky.”
“I can’t move, my legs shake, I seriously have that energy,” Ford said.
A few years ago, she discovered the Kent Island Express car service, operated by Steven Eskew. When Eskew gets a call, he explains to drivers where to meet him on either side of the bridge so that he can have a team member hop in their car and drive them across. Eskew follows, picks up his colleague, and they take the next person waiting for a ride.
“This is the best thing ever, like for a lot of people,” Ford said.
Like a lot of Eskew’s clients, she didn’t always find the bridge so intimidating, but after turning 45, what had been a twinge of anxiety turned into near-panic.
Another client, who declined to give his name, said something similar.
He told WTOP that in recent years, “When I get up to certain heights, I get vertigo and it’s a little bit nerve-wracking.”
He said he had driven over the bridge hundreds of times when he was younger.
“You get older and life catches up with you, I guess,” he said with a laugh.
As he drove across the westbound span with a WTOP reporter in the car, Eskew said he can spot anxious drivers who are white-knuckling their way across the bridge in their own cars.
“They’ll hug the yellow line,” and they have a death-grip on the steering wheel. “I don’t like to use the word scared, but they are very, very uncomfortable driving the bridge,” he said.
Eskew took over the business about 11 years ago, and said a few things have changed. Thanks to services such as Airbnb and Vrbo, vacation season spans the whole year, so he can have busy days in October as well as August. The busiest day so far was one that included 44 trips.
“We have absolutely seen much more anxiety post-COVID,” he said, with more people voicing their concerns about their fears and making the call to reserve a ride instead of trying to tough it out themselves.
And then came the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.
“When the Key Bridge collapsed, we were inundated with tons of calls,” he said, with people wondering if something similar could happen to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
He did get other calls with people expressing concern for him and asking about the welfare of his co-workers: “That was heartwarming.”
And now, he said, more people who have never used the service before are calling to check it out.
Eskew charges $40 cash to cross one way, and $50 if a client uses a credit card.