Is it terrible of me to be suspicious? They were only driving 25 and a sudden storm blew over? I wonder if they were stupidly driving 60 and the wind caught under the mattress. For that matter, if I was driving a mattress in the back of a pickup, with no cover on it, and a midwest summer thunderstorm blew in, I’d probably drive faster too.
Certain things just seem to work as particularly good sails in a sudden wind. I saw a guy on a roofing job carrying a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood get blown off a roof when he was hit by a sudden gust of wind. Fortunately, he just broke an ankle, but things could have been much worse.
I have a hard time believing at 25MPH the wind would have lifted the matress, however as someone who has been buffetted by sudden 60 MPH gusts, I can believe if one of these slammed the truck, it could have flipped that mattress and the boy on top of it right out.