Comment 41841

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted June 10, 2010 at 13:46:55

I've spent a lot of time with truckers. Enough to criss-cross this country a couple times over.

Trucks are not gods. In the middle of the night, on some desolate highway in Saskatchewan, one's truck can still be pulled into the "scales" for an inspection. They'll weigh you, check your log-books, and even inspect your cargo. And they should - trucks are as dangerous to a house as a car is to a port-a-john. They can crush your car without sustaining a scratch, and stopping a double-trailer loads (a little over a hundred thousand pounds total), even in the best of circumstances, is like trying to hit the breaks on a rolling parking garage. Oh, and if it "jacknifes" because you hit the breaks too hard, you're talking about the potential for harm of a cruise missile in urban centres.

And after this time with truckers, I've developed a lot of respect for them. Particularly, I try not to cut them off. But I've also learned that if I see a truck behaving erratically on the highway to STAY THE HELL AWAY. Maybe he's tired, has been driving way too long and has put down over 3 litres of coffee that day. Or it's because (in rare cases) he's been up for 3 days smoking crystal meth and faking his log books - a very profitable way to make extra cash, if you make it alive.

If stretches of northern Sask. highway are going to invest this kind of effort in regulating and policing trucks, why is Hamilton so afraid to do the same?

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