"Driven Mad" brings our concerns to a wider audience

Some of our trucks are electronically governed to a set roadspeed. Some of them are governed as slow as 62 mph. We're not trying to be slow and there's no way to make it move faster when you're behind us.

Some of us have a "Black Box" in our trucks that monitor every movement of the truck. Those data recorders tell us when to work, when to sleep, and even tell us that our truck cannot be moved until the driver takes a ten hour rest break, as required by Uncle Sam. That's often why rest areas, highway on ramps, shopping center parking lots and city streets have parked trucks in them. We're not slow and lazy, we're restricted to slow speeds and have to comply with Hours-of-Service regulations in a zero tolerance environment. When that box says the truck can not be moved, it will not be moved.

We're subject to constant scrutiny and inspections at random by Law Enforcement. When you see a group of truckers pulled over by the Police, they haven't always done anything wrong. The truckers' paperwork, load and equipment are being closely inspected for the safety of the public.

We're subject to mandatory random drug tests and will be forced to park and not move if any of us have any trace of alcohol in our body.

We're subject to traffic law that changes with every state we drive through, as well as the federal laws. Some of us are small business owners and have to submit to similar scrutiny for our trucking business- on top of our other compliance responsibilities.

Several times a day we enter weigh stations to make sure the loads in our trailers are not overweight. In a weigh station our permits, paperwork and personal driving records are subject to review, as well as random safety inspections of our trucks. We sometimes travel through Border Patrol Checkpoints where we may, or may not be inspected and interviewed to ensure our citizenship. Some of us carry extra identification that's required to enter ports and railyards to pick up freight and some of those facilities X-Ray our trucks while we drive in.

We're subject to a higher standard of scrutiny than the general public and are expected to be cooperative and provide transparency on demand with no hesitation. Our driving record must be clean- a trucker can lose his privilege to drive commercial motor vehicles for only a few tickets in the last few years.

And a lot of these laws apply to us in every vehicle we drive, including our personal passenger vehicles.

And, THANKS! for posting this, Penguin! I sent them this post, hope it'll look OK.