by Jimmy

Created on: April 21, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

Road safety from a truck driver's perspective, it should be a mandatory part of driver training. It's a comfort to know that my fellow professional drivers feel the way I do about this very serious subject. Distraction is the biggest problem, also a lack of seriousness by many drivers who share the road with trucks.

I earned my driving privilege in the nineteen seventies, when gas was .60 cent a gallon, and people weren't paying attention either, to their responsibilities. They treated the driving privilege as "granted", and just like anything else handed over to someone without an effort, you don't really appreciate the awesome power you've received when it is given to you in this way. Something never change.

Everyone knows that a car can take you from here to there almost effortlessly, and relatively cheap, but most people don't give it a second thought that it is only a few generations that have been blessed with this amazing ability. Before automobiles and subsequently our modern trucks (exclude trains), the best method of conveyance across land was a donkey /oxen and a wagon, at a painstaking pace of; 20 to 30 mile a day if you were lucky! Roads being as much as a limiting factor to speed as the horse and wagon and the driver themselves. When driving was hard, only the professionals took the reins.

Our means have changed and freight moves now at 60 miles per hour, "to use a conservative figure", all day long, and all through the night. But human nature stays the same, and safety often takes a back seat to self interest and vanity, in our modern day automobile driver. The walk through on the driver training process doesn't help the situation at all. I don't know anyone in reasonable health who wishes to drive, and has the money to back them up, would be denied a license to drive. Even illegal's can drive if they have enough money (I'm talking about the real world now!). Driving has become an easy task to take on in this country, but it will always be a hard task to master!

To the professional truck driver safety is a life saving factor, checking tires and springs will saves the life of everyone on the road! We are constantly being mandated with layers of protective laws, and the seriousness of our task is always being reinforced for the general safety of everyone on the road. As it should be! But the drivers in the cars, they are on the same road riding side by side with the trucks. I will never understand why so many drivers pay so little attention when the

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