Diary of a Truck Driver

Well 2011 is nearly at an end with only one run left before the donk goes silent for the last time this year. Fear not though 2012 will see more of DoaTD.

To the vast majority of car the drivers I had the pleasure of sharing the Pacific Highway with yesterday, thanks for nothing. While I didn’t see any crashes I saw a lot of near misses.

What is it about driving that is so hard? Basic stuff like indicating before you slow to turn and maintaining a constant speed are basic concepts but then there are more complex issues like concentrating… I lost count of the drivers I followed who were too busy yakking to their passengers and waving their arms about pointing at cows and trees as their speed slipped further and further down the scale only to see the panic in their eyes when they eventually looked in the mirror and realised their car was going to gain a 64 tonne addition. The other thing too numerous for counting was trailers with blown tyres and often two of them at once. These trailers, caravans etc have obviously sat around all year with tyres that are well beyond their intended safe life only to be loaded to the gunnels and dragged out onto the highway. Why aren’t tyre ages checked? Do people not realise that the materials in their tyres degrade with age and that the manufacture date is written on the sidewall and at most they’ll get six years out of them. Maybe this is another reason why trailer towing should require an additional licence endorsement and licence theory should cover basic vehicle maintenance and inspection procedures. These drivers are heading out onto the roads with equipment that is visibly defective and then overloading that same equipment and nobody is enforcing any common sense. It appears that my driving 15 minutes more in a 14 hour day (less than a 2% increase over the course of a day) is far more dangerous than an overloaded box trailer or caravan with an immanent major equipment failure, both of which are being towed by poorly skilled, fatigued and distracted drivers.

While I’m at it… as I pulled into Archerfield at around 10pm last night there was a Highway Patrol vehicle parked on the verge checking the work diary of a bob-tail truck leaving the area. The way these guys were set up they were there for one purpose, to check fatigue compliance of trucks leaving the Truck Stop. Fair enough, the rules are there for all and like ‘em or not they are the rules but if a truck is leaving the BP, bob-tail, at that time of night the only place he’s going is either somewhere more comfortable or to his depot to get in his car and go home. Where is the ‘crime’ in this, he’s doing just a fraction more than he has all day so that he can get a better rest. Who’s going to be a less fatigued driver the next day when he (or she) heads out amongst the idiots to do it again? Meanwhile the car drivers are drunk, speeding through road works and doing whatever else it is they do and you don’t see a single Candy Car out there… bugger me! Have we forgotten what we’re trying to do? It’s about safety guys.

To the driver at Grafton who tried to suicide under my bull-bar as he pulled out in front of me (as per the Facebook video) go buy yourself a lottery ticket mate, had I been as inattentive as you for a second or two we’d have been waiting together for that familiar dub-dub sound of the chopper coming in to dust you off.

To the guy who got scared because I was up his clacker, sorry Bud, I don’t usually do that but when you overtook on the double lines when I was doing 102kph I thought we had thrown away the rules. I never anticipated that you’d then do 97 in front of me for the next ten minutes (insert sarcastic expression). If you want to throw away the rules that’s fine by me but don’t throw a paddy when the tables are turned, you’ll be scrapping lumps out of your Reg Grundy’s long before me.

To everyone else, have a safe and happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you out here for a most excellent adventure in 2012.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2011 at 11:17 am and is filed under Truck driving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.