Another problem is that the more restrictions and laws they force on us as a driving force, the more it pushes the older more respectable drivers out of the industry.
Yeah, don't know if you've heard, but up here in Ontario, all trucks are supposed to be electronicly limited to 105km/h (63mph). It's a law, and it's up to the fleet owner to make it so. I can see the frustration in the drivers. On the one hand, I actually do feel things are a lot safer. I very rarely have a truck up on my bumper at 115. On the other hand, there are a LOT of "elephant races". One truck doing an actual 105.1 passing another truck doing 104.9. And they're there all day. They don't care. The guy being passed should let off, but they never do.
In my opinion cars present a much higher risk to you than trucks. You can get killed just easily by a car as a truck and there are many more cars on the road, mostly driven by far less qualified drivers. The numbers alone would argue that you chances of being killed by a car are higher.
I don't agree. Yes, I'm more likely to be killed by a car than a truck. But only because there are so many more cars. And yes, some of them are bad. Well I think the drivers are about the same, but it's easier for a bad driver in a car to cause trouble than a truck, because trucks can't manoever as fast. I drove 800km yesterday, and had 2 really bad car drivers. One of them driving too fast and swerving through traffic, cut me off (had to hit the brakes), etc. Another, a guy in a MB 500SL or something, merged onto a freeway at about 40mph, I had to slam on the brakes, he never sped up and got off at the next exit. I only had one badish truck incident, and it wasn't that bad. I was in the left lane, passed a truck on the right who was coming up on a slow car in the right lane, and he pulled out to pass the car way too close on my tail. He didn't want to slow down. There's no excuse for a truck to be driving 10 feet behind a family minivan, I don't care how much of a rush you're in.
When I use the CB or blink my lights to indicate that it's safe to re-occupy the lane, I always get a "thank you".
I do that too. If I'm around a trucker who's driving responsibly, I'll work with him. If I'm being passed, I'll take off the cruise control so he can get it done and back over into the right, and flash my lights when he's clear. But if I'm in the left lane, stuck behind somebody else, and I get an impatient truck behind me, I'm always going to slow down.
The worst are the ones who try to squeeze you out of the lane. They've had my wife in tears a couple of times. I'm in the left lane, passing two trucks on the right, but I'm being held up by somebody ahead of me. I'm running beside the trailing truck on the right. The trailing truck in the right lane decides he wants to pass the leading truck in the right lane. He puts on his signal, and expects me to slam on the brakes to let him into the left lane. I can't accellerate because there's another (usually a truck) ahead of me. Then, they just start to move over.
We almost had a head on with a bridge abutment once, because me wife was driving and she actually went over onto the left shoulder, but then the left shoulder disappeared as the road when over a bridge.
The worst is when they do "the wiggle" to try and scare the car in the left lane. I saw a real bad incident once when a fuel tanker truck did a severe wiggle trying to get a car to let him into the left lane. I was about a 1/4 mile back in a vehicle with an RCMP officer who saw the whole thing. I thought for sure he'd call 911 on the cell phone and call in a trooper to come stop this guy, but he never did anything. I was livid.
It is almost criminally illegal. All it takes is one violation and I lose my license for up to a year. A second violation I can lose it for life.
It's not even close to the same. If I pull a gun out and point it at your head, and you get it on video, I'm going to JAIL. You think that if I took video of you driving a truck 10 feet from my bumper, that you'd go to jail? Not a chance. I honestly don't see the difference between the two infractions.
