About 5 years ago I was traveling Westbound on I-80 through Wyoming. The snow was falling hard and fast and the visibility was so bad that I kept wondering at the wisdom of any driver who would be out there no matter what the dispatcher said. The roads were covered and at times it was hard to tell where the road ended. In places I had to navigate by the reflectors along the road.
Somewhere around Rawlins I had just started down a fairly steep hill and though I had slowed down quite a bit I knew I was still traveling too fast because my fingers were cramping and my knuckles were as white as the snow outside. I didn't dare change speeds any faster so I just kept my foot off the gas and let the truck slow itself down as much as it would. Before I could get slow enough to relax my knuckles a little white mini-van came flying up beside me so fast that it scared me. As it came by my side I tried to see who was driving so I could 'advise' them to slow down. Just as it got to the front of me it cut back into my lane so close that I was sure it clipped my bumper.
My heart stopped and the only way I could keep from hitting it was to grab a little brake. Instantly my tractor jackknifed. I was pulling a load of whiskey and was very near 80,000 pounds. The weight of all that whiskey kept pushing me right along. I could no longer see the mini-van so I had no idea if I hit them or what. The trailer was pushing me steadily toward the median and as I looked down into that deep ravine I knew without a doubt that I was going to die right there under 46,000 pounds of whiskey.
The funny thing was, I really wasn't scared. At that moment, which seemed like hours, I just knew that my time was up and this was it. I remember thinking how weird it was to be travelling westbound and be looking eastbound over the hood of my truck. I even thought it was funny that I could have reached out the drivers window and touched the very trailer which in a matter of seconds was going to be crushing me beneath it. At the very last second and seemingly as if my body was moving without the permission of my brain, my hand reached up and pulled the trailer brake, at the same time my foot was pushing the clutch to the floor. It was almost as if I was a spectator instead of a participant. Thinking back now, I'm not so sure I wasn't just a spectator. Whatever the case, it worked. Miraculously my tandems caught just enough traction to slow them down and my tractor snapped into position just as if I had planned it that way. I hadn't realized I was being watched but even as I was pulling over to the side of the road I was being cheered over the C.B. by Eastbound and Westbound drivers who had seen the whole thing and thought me just as dead as I had.
I finally got the truck parked and jumped out to inspect the damage to my tractor. Luckily the road was so slick that the jacknife had only mashed the drivers side cab extender. Just then I thought of the mini-van and ran to the back of my truck to see what had happened to it. They were off the side of the road and nearly windshield deep in snow. It was obvious that they were not going to get out under their own power. About that time I felt all the blood drain from my face and I went into a bit of shock at the memory of what just happened and the realization of how close I had come to dying. Then I felt the blood come back into my face, boiling. I became so mad I wanted to hit somebody and I headed up to that mini-van with exactly that in mind.
When I reached the back of the van I could see in the window that there were three or four kids in there. All were crying and the eldest two were looking at me. My temperature dropped a few degrees. I reached the drivers' window and found a young woman who was also crying. My temperature dropped further but I was still mad enough to yell, though not hit. I tried to pull the door open but it was locked. I knocked on the window but she shook her head indicating that she was not going to open it. I guess I still looked madder than I felt. By that time a couple of other drivers had stopped and walked up to the van. Between the 3 of us we finally convinced her to open the window. In a short time we got her calmed down and helped get her back on the road. By the time we got her out the lady could tell that I had calmed down and she had begun appologizing to me. I snapped that what she had done was very unwise even on dry pavement let alone snow covered roads. She said she knew but had been distracted by the kids. We finally talked everything out and she headed down the road. I thanked the drivers who had helped me and then we headed down the road too.
I have thought many times about this lady and the kids in that car. There is no way to describe the emotions I went through that day. Both from the fear of my own death and the fearful thought that those kids and their mother came just as close to death as I did. The thing that bothers me most about this is the fact that so many 4 wheelers have no idea of what they are dealing with when it comes to tangling with a truck. On a daily basis we have cars merging onto the freeway next to us without even bothering to look in their mirrors, let alone over their shoulder. Also every day we have people hurrying to cut in front of us then immediately slowing down once they have the lane. With some of them it is obvious that they do it on purpose because they think it is fun or just because they don't like trucks or maybe they feel we have slighted them in some way. Too many others are obviously just ignorant of the dangerous game they are playing. How can we convince these people that they are playing Russian Roulette with their lives and ours.
It has become obvious to most of us that the lawmakers in this country refuse to accept the fact that 99.9% of us are professionals who care about the lives we touch and conduct ourselves accordingly. To them we are just some dumb truck driver who can't do anything else but drive so they make ridiculous laws and restrictions which absolutely make us far more dangerous than most of us would be if there were no D.O.T. and no unfair special laws just for trucks. Somehow we must convince this country that we are here to stay and that we want safe roads too. I would love to see a transportation secretary who was a truck driver but since to my knowledge this has never happened yet, it is up to us to do everything in our power to convince the public and the government that the answer lies in education and not restriction.
As I said last month I wrote to the lawmakers in Utah. All I
have seen in return so far was one form letter saying that this politician
does not have time to answer E-mail but if my name and address was included
in the E-mail, he would write to me personally when he got time. Guess he
hasn't had time yet. The others did not even bother to send a form letter.
The danger in this is that I might give up and say, "Oh well. I tried." In
truth the answer is to drive these idiots nuts with more letters and phone
calls. If it takes a squeaky wheel to get any attention around here then by
damn it is up to you and me to squeak so loud they will forget every other
sound they hear.. I hope you will join me.. Keep 'er between the lines and
try to educate a 4 wheeler today.....