Truckers Rule #1: Always expect the unexpected.

Their phone. Just like everyone else on the road these days.

 

That is my thought as well. If someone is driving a smaller vehicle with trucks nearby, then their attention should have been better directed at the most immediate task at hand - driving.

Why people feel the need to see who is calling/texting their phone, let alone responding to such notifications, is beyond me.

 

That 4wheelr never touched the brakes. Of course the wrongway pickup never slowed down either.

1/3 motorists are on psych drugs, 1/3 on the phone, it's wonder there aren't more crashes!

 

What is even more scary than that, is the number of idiot drivers who have the totally mistaken belief that they are much better drivers than average.

 

If you don't take a look see and evaluate threats to your rig as far as you can see all around you, sometimes you are not going to get the time you need to do something about it.

I was in Akron being trailed by a State Trooper or Local Police at speed in a construction zone featuring walls almost as high as me on both lanes. No shoulders.

To make a long story short there was a black Jeep Comanche or similar SUV stopped in my lane broken down with three kids who had noses against the back window looking at me coming on. I mashed the air, knocked the speed from 60 down to a hair above 25 and then horsed the rig savagely into the left lane the moment I had about one more foot than I needed of open space of all those cars in the left. They were pissed. The cop, poor thing I guess he stopped faster than I did. He had to. I allowed the trailer to slam into a section of wall to the left rather than try to recover it and possibly see it whip back across and kill everyone in that SUV after all.

Freight got shaken down all over the inside of my rig in one big pile that required 15 hours to sort and put on small wood. But it was a happy 15 hours knowing I did not kill children and their parents today. Thank God for Bendix and Bridge stone Commercial all of which worked flawlessly that day.

I imagine the rubber I left there in that lane probably lasted 6 months, I remember further there was three tires with blacktop melted in the treads down to the steel belting and having to all be replaced. They asked me questions with many bad words demanding a answer before threatening to dock my pay a thousand dollars and change. I told them those tires bought 5 lives in addition to my own.

Blessed silence.

 

They were probably texting.

 

Probably. I loose track of how many times a day I see people doing something on their phones other than talking. Then there are the ones that are on their computer or are fumbling with papers or whatever else in the passenger or back seat.

 

Ditto.
A friend of mine says he gives them a blast of the air horn when he sees people doing things like that, but I'm worried that they will freak out and swerve into me.....

 

The ones on the computer and fumbling paper are usually driving something with law enforcement markings. Had an Ohio dot nearly hit my trailer on I-75 and a Texas trooper nearly rearended me outside Laredo. Both were messing on computers.

 

A valid concern. If they are so engrossed in whateverthehell they are doing, (LEO or otherwise,) startling them awake could have disastrous results. Sort of like waking up a sleep walker on a high wire...