I am so sick of this type of smear coming out of mental midgets like LaHood, and others that seek to blame the ills of driving and accident rates on Truckers. It is intellectually lazy.
We deliver the things you use every damned day, and what thanks do we get for it? Flipped off, honked at, called in on threatening our lively hood, and ever increasing regulation and taxation that will result in Americans paying much higher costs at the check out line.
Car drivers have over the years, my own some 20 years driving, become rude, rule of the road breakers, and completely selfish in their driving, not caring a bit whom they place in danger. And who constantly gets the blame for it? We do, Truckers!
Heck even stories on the news that show truck vs car accidents on the highways often don't tell the watchers until the very end of the story that the car was at fault.
Lawyers cashing in, suing even if their client was the cause of the accident like bottom feeders they are.
Now, I am not saying that there are some truckers out there that are inexperienced, and do cause some problems, however, you keep it up, (talking to the ungrateful masses here) and just wait. When myself, and my cohorts that do have the experience decide to pack it in, then you'll be left with nothing but greenhorns. Good luck with that.
j-mac
Well, J-mac, your "delivering of the things we use every damned day" doesn't give you the right to endanger lives more than they are already endangered. While I certainly do not agree with the gov't banning people from doing something legit in a car, your doing some things, while on the road, endanger others. There is the big catch. I am against ANYBODY doing anything distracting while driving, sans having a conversation in the car. There is a difference, you don't have to conscientiously answer a phone if it's someone in the car. I've driven for 15 years, without a single accident and one yellow light violation (not a red light running ticket, ironically enough) in those 15 years, long long expunged. I drove my truck twice while on the phone, and it terrified me. I always drive alone, have my radio preset, and I do very little while driving. I have HAM radio, but since that's no more than a CB with better range, I am not against having it or having truckers use them. The conversations on CB's are short lived due to range/congestion limits, but cell phone conversations can go on for HOURS.
While I don't think the gov't has a right to infringe on what you can do inside your vehicle, I do not believe that you have a right to do something that endangers my life, or anyone elses. This doesn't mean that we don't respect truck drivers (we took a 700 mile car trip today from Tennessee to south Louisiana and saw no fewer than 15 truckers who were 1. Exceeding the speed limit, 2. swerving, 3. not using blinkers correctly, 4. Tailgating so don't pretend that truckers are god's gift to the freeway) but you don't get special privileges because you haul my junk. Because getting technical, if it wasn't for me putting a demand on the junk you haul, you'd be out of a job. So you should be thanking us for buying ****, not getting pissy because we don't want 80,000lbs of big rig at 70mph controlled by a driver who is too busy babbling with someone on the other side of the country about what their little boy did at soccer.
And no, not every distraction can be eliminated. But most truckers ride alone, and cell phones are a controllable distraction, so why wouldn't you want to be safe? They've already done tests and proven while talking on a cell phone you are a less attentive driver. It's not a secret. To argue it would be asinine.
http://www.edgarsnyder.com/car-accident/cell-phone/statistics.html
# A car driver dialing a cell phone is 2.8 times more likely to get into a crash than a non-distracted driver.
No, shut up and drive. Talk on the CB, but put down the phone. I'll lead by example. Truckers "trucked" for decades before cell phones were invented with nothing more than an am/fm radio and a CB and they managed. I agree with banning truckers from using them while driving but only because I think they should be banned across the board for all drivers.
