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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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Found this on another forum....
Fill a small room with cats, wall to wall. Then ensure that 1/3 of them are blind, 1/3 are drunk, and the other 1/3 are high on meth. Next, try to drive a golf cart through the room without touching any of them--not even a whisker's contact, and you might begin to understand what it's like to be a commercial truck driver on today's roads. So be nice. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Mon Nov 03, 2008 8:31 am |
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JoeMama
F L I N T O I D
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| ...and the truck driving schools are always full. Makes you wonder how great the pay is, eh? |
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Fri Nov 07, 2008 8:20 pm |
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Kevin McKague
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Dave Starr schreef:
Found this on another forum....
Fill a small room with cats, wall to wall. Then ensure that 1/3 of them are blind, 1/3 are drunk, and the other 1/3 are high on meth. Next, try to drive a golf cart through the room without touching any of them--not even a whisker's contact, and you might begin to understand what it's like to be a commercial truck driver on today's roads. So be nice.
It can be tricky. Its not like driving a car where sometimes you might let your attention drift for a moment while flying down the freeway to find a CD. There is no room for error driving a truck, so you have to try to watch 180 degrees around you constantly.
Its amazing how many people will cut off a 70,000 pound truck, even going down a steep mountain incline.
Here's my biggest pet-peeve though:
When entering a freeway, it is the responsibility of the person entering the freeway to find a spot in which to safely merge, and then get into it with as little disturbance to the existing traffic as possible.
It is not the responsibility of everyone already on the freeway to make room for the new guy
. This is especially true with trucks, because we can't always be 100% sure of what is in our blind spots, and it isn't always safe for us to move over to the fast lane just because you didn't think until the end of the 1/2 mile on-ramp about where you were going to merge into traffic.
Still, sure enough, a half-dozen times a day, some daydreamer will wait until they get to the end of the ramp to figure out that I need to move my truck out of the way for them. Then they race around me and flip me off, usually with the hand that
isn't
holding the cell phone or the breakfast burrito.
quote:
..and the truck driving schools are always full. Makes you wonder how great the pay is, eh?
The pay is good, but I became a truck driver because I wanted a job where I couldn't be laid-off. My job is recession-proof. Everything you have ever bought in a store got there by truck. BTW, if my friends and I decided to take the week off of work, the economy would come to a screeching halt. Its nice finally having a job that is as important as mine. |
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Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:44 am |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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I agree completely on the people merging.
I also have noticed that quite a few people seem to pass trucks very slowly - sometimes as much as a half mile to get past. I prefer to get by more quickly & get away from the buffeting. Also, I wait until I can see the front bumper of the vehicle I'm passing in my rear view mirror, rather than ducking back in quickly. What do truckers prefer? |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Sat Nov 08, 2008 9:12 am |
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Kevin McKague
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
Dave Starr schreef:
I agree completely on the people merging.
I also have noticed that quite a few people seem to pass trucks very slowly - sometimes as much as a half mile to get past. I prefer to get by more quickly & get away from the buffeting. Also, I wait until I can see the front bumper of the vehicle I'm passing in my rear view mirror, rather than ducking back in quickly. What do truckers prefer?
I'm hesitant to claim I know what truckers prefer, because I see a lot of truck drivers with the same bad habits as four-wheelers.
I prefer to give everyone on the road as much room as possible. Cars shouldn't spend too much time driving alongside a truck, especially on the truck's right side. Nobody should cut too close to the front of a truck. Two car lengths at 65 mph is not enough. If the car must make a sudden stop without warning, that space will be gone before the brain of the driver behind him can even register the danger and respond. Actually getting the truck to stop will take several seconds and thousands of feet more.
The next time you're out on the freeway, away from a city, take a moment to notice how most drivers drive in clumps. There might only be five cars heading in the same direction that you can see, but chances are, most of them are driving within a few feet of each other. When you find yourself in a position like that, the best thing to do is to back off the cruise control just two or three mph, and let yourself get some buffer space. Then move back up to your preferred speed, and you'll find that you've probably only added about 60 seconds to your total trip time.
Most accidents can be prevented by just protecting the speed around you, and regularly scanning the road far ahead of you, rather than focusing on the space right in front of your bumper. |
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Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:35 pm |
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