Highway shoulders are no substitute for rest stops
6/3/07
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I would be willing to bet the price of a new rig that if any of those drivers had driven on to the rest stop it was full and they probably knew it. No driver I know would sleep on the side of the road if he had a choice. The problem here is lack of proper parking areas. Trucks on the shoulder of the road are just a symptom of the the larger problem not the problem itself.You can't have it both ways,conform to the H.O.S. rules or no trucks on the exit ramps and shoulders until you provide a place for them to go. It's not like we can park in a driveway or a parking lot,try it,I promise that about the time you get to sleep you will be ordered to MOVE IT!!

I don't like to do it, but I have slept on an onramp. Not an offramp. Problem is sometimes there is no place to park. I was in Wilkes Barre PA one time and I made hot laps at both truckstops and I was out of hours and kept circling to land. Nodoby would fly out of the nest and I needed to land. When I woke up I had several trucks behind me on the ramp.

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I don't usually park on ramps either but it helps to know an area well enough to know where you can park when the truck-stops are full. Nebraska has taken to blocking the shoulder on ramps with steel posts, MN has no parking signs on the on ramps but not the off ramps.I won't even discuss IN. If you know Chicago, you can usually come up with a place without going too far, but have to be careful of those darned over-passes.

Yeah, it's really amusing (in a very sad way) that the issue of not nearly enough truck parking only ever gets discussed when some joker gets killed. In this case, the four wheeler ran off and hit the parked truck, what do these geniuses think would have happened had the truck not been there? The car hits the armco or jersey wall, or flies off the road and head-ons a tree. Net Change, zero, car driver is still dead.
And yes, even though I don't like too, I have parked on many an on-ramp (an even once in a while an off-ramp) to catch an eye-opener or even do a proper break,although if I need a full break, I will usu stop on an off ramp (for a truck stop)for a few hours, and when it gets to real early morning, putt into a truck stop.
And the states that go to blocking the shoulders (or like IN that write you a ticket for parking there), what a crock of garbage, I guess they'd rather have us rolling down the road asleep at the wheel.

A motorist was quoted in the article,
Another ignorant comment from someone who has no idea what he is talking about just trying to make truckers look bad. Does he think we enjoy sleeping on the side of the road like an animal?

But the newspaper that ran this story gets most of the blame for basically editorializing a news story. They didn't give enough of the trucker's side of the story for it to be objective.

Bump that.

I'm sitting here reading this thread thinking to myself, now if a lumberjack cut down a tree and it was sitting on the shoulder would lumberjacks get a bad wrap? Odd analogy I know, but when will people start taking responsibility for their own actions? What caused the car to veer off of the road? Fell asleep, perhaps!

Ive slept along 287, right b4 78 south bound side.. when your tired and states lack rest areas... what can you do... But had i known back in 87 that i would be otr, i think i could have made some areas off 287 a little wider, being that i was blasting through those mtns up to Suffrin NY! Spent a little over 2 yrs.. There... Load High And Let It Fly