Another "driving award"

Well lots of judgemental comments on here! All i have to say is you will gets lots of mail from lawyers trying to work for you! The Commonwealth of Virginia is hard on speeders and their tickets come with misdemeanors and/or jail time! Your ticket is public knowledge and the lawyers have a field day asking to represent you! Hope you do well, bring all proof to support your facts! Good Luck!

 

Personally I see all sides to this incident. I-95 in VA is not the best place in the world to run an OS load permitted at 55.

I'm not a legal beagle who's going to ream an offender like some on here. I've fracture the occasional law in my day, and truth be told will probably do so again. I've been cited for speeding once in 11 years, and 6 times since I first got my regular driver's license when I was 16, but I assure you I have sped far more than the six times I've been cited for it.

Likewise, I don't run 100% legal on my logs. I can't say as though I ever have through out my driving career. I've had my logs checked by roadside/scalehouse DOT inspections at least a dozen times (far less times than many people I personally know) and have never received a citation for illegal logs, but I have received two written warnings.

With all that said, here's the point.

I know that there will likely come a time when I will get caught for either speeding or illegal logs. I only hope that when/if I do get caught, it's not because of a major accident that I'm involved in (whether at fault or not).

However, I'm well aware of the fact that I'm probably in violation of at least one law every single time I'm on the highway. Does that mean I'm a bad driver, or incredibly unsafe? Absolutely not. It means I'm human and I will make a mistake. Does that excuse any mistakes that I'll likely make? Hell no. I'm admitting right now that I will likely be in violation in some fashion or another. Anyone who says they are always spot on perfect is a bold faced liar. Anyone reading these words could very well have the same thing happen to them. The anonymity of the internet, added with the fact that some truck drivers (especially members of this forum) are always right, will likely bring about some controversy to this post. I still say that anybody could be found guilty of any number of serious crimes in a court of law given the right (or wrong) circumstances.

So, why come on here and completely cannibalize a fellow driver and speak with a holier than though tone when all the guy wanted to know is whether or not anyone here could offer up some help in finding an attorney? If you couldn't answer that question, you should have moved on to another post, IMHO. However, that doesn't seem to be the way on this forum a lot of times. I should know, I've been an active member here for over two and a half years and made over 7800 posts.

Many members (past and present) just live for the opportunity to belittle other members for whatever real reason and use the guise of "letting the new drivers know how things should be done."

News flash: Not everyone who reads these posts or joins this forum are new drivers!

 

Good points Scarecrow but keep in mind every driver out there represents the industry . Major accidents get major headlines , gather more supporters for Road Safe America and Public Citizen and give attornies fresh info to use on their websites and tv ads . A driver running legal has problems enough . Have you ever driven a truck over 90,000 lbs ? Do you really think you can keep a safe stopping interval running in excess of 60 m.p.h. in the center lane ? That would make great headlines if someone cut him off and got hit , especially if he expressed his "I'm not losing sleep over it . The dumazz desrved what he got . " . So you can feel he should be told " Here ya go buddy . This attorney will get the charges dropped " Then let him go on business as usual . But don't scratch your head wondering why these "Safety" organizations have no problem getting thousands of supporters to try to pass anti-trucking laws .

 

I'm not saying over 55 was unsafe . I'm pointing out the way an attorney and jury could use it against you even if someone else was at fault . It could also be used to support installing EOBR's .

 

YOU continue to miss the point though. The permit restricted YOU to anything over 55 MPH. Even if it would be safe YOU still violated the conditions of the permit, and were therefore cited for it. Whose fault was that? Not the cops, not the "doomsday people" on this forum, and not anyone else. YOU caused the problem. Now YOU wish for people here to give YOU the name of an attorney to get YOU out of the problem YOU caused. Instead of just crying and making excuses, why don't YOU take the time to figure out where the true problem lies? After all, YOU wouldn't be in this situation if YOU merely went a little slower. Wake up and smell the roses and quit attempting to place blame where blame doesn't belong!

 

Very true, and I cannot argue with this.

I can argue this. I submit that 98% of the drivers that don't run a paperless log will be illegal at some point in time during the course of any given day. I don't condone it, but I don't deny it either.

No I haven't.

Having never driven a truck over 90k lbs. GVW, and not being an expert in physics, I can't answer this with absolute certainty. I can guesstimate that it is possible, but highly unlikely.

While I understood where sodbuster may have been coming from with this mentality, I emphatically disagree. We all see other drivers (both the 4 and 18 wheel variety) make boneheaded and asinine maneuvers out there. One has to wonder if they don't have a death wish at times. However, I would lose sleep and probably my career (either by choice because I wouldn't want to live with those images burned into my memory or because of a court finding me guilty of vehicular manslaughter) should I be involved in a fatal accident.

This site is about helping drivers and potential drivers. If you don't want to help a person in a particular subject matter, that's perfectly fine, but it shouldn't mean you have a green light to criticize and ridicule another driver. Maybe I just live in a fantasy world, or maybe it's just that after my time on this forum and reading all these threads where posters are attacking other posters' actions I'm kinda fed up with it. It's that very mentality that has eliminated the comradary that once existed between drivers. No one wants to help someone with a problem anymore. They just wanna further analyze why there is a problem.

I never said I'm scratching my head about that. In fact, I thought my original post in this thread made it clear that I completely understand. Maybe I was wrong, and for that I'll scratch my head