In Your Opinion: Practice Safe Driving

By Bill Connell,Somerset.

Before I get rolling, I would like to suggest to someone important that tractor-trailers have better brake lights. Those two cute little circles on the back don’t really get the point across. If you look at Volvo station wagons they have a band of brake lights.

In the month of May I drove over 2,000 miles. Most of it was on highways. I had time to think and observe. I wonder how many people who have Amazon Prime complain about trucks on the road? If you drive through the area Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the scale of commerce is noticeable and profound.

Trucks indeed have some bad habits but my fellow day-trippers leave them no choice. It’s like an amateur poker player, playing with professionals. You are having fun, they think you’re an idiot. A fully loaded truck can weigh at least 40,000 lbs . Maybe if we pretended highways were Jurassic Park and trucks are Tyrannosaurus rex’s….we might show them more respect. I think with everything being press of a button, we have lost touch with the dangers of Kinetic Energy and Momentum. If you have ever worked with a table saw, you know what I mean.

The notion of safe driving distances is out the window. At 60 miles an hour you are supposed to leave 6 car lengths between you and the next car (car, not truck). The only time I saw that was 11 pm in Virginia. Any time a truck left a safe traveling distance in front of it, someone would pass the truck and fill in the safe driving distance. It’s usually not the idiot that pays the price, it’s the person behind the idiot that pays the price.

Be careful out there and have a safe summer.

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