Quote:
Originally Posted by IL Bar
As a farmer that also has to drive semi to haul my grain to market, I really take offence to your comments. EDMONTON city drivers can be some of the stupidest around. There I can talk like you too. Truth is there are poor drivers in everywhere and in every aspect of life. But no one admits to being a poor driver because everyone else on the road seems to be a poor driver instead. Doesn’t help that the highways are twice as busy as they were 10 years ago.
I agree with tougher penalties for bad driving and unsafe equipment but those will have to be extended to passenger vehicles as well. There are a lot of passenger vehicles on the road that are unsafe and I also think it’s time that RVs should really get cracked down on. There are some people out there pulling RVs that defiantly shouldn’t be and plenty of way overloaded half ton trucks.
I personally think in order to get your drivers license that you should have to drive a semi around for a couple of days with an instructor. It would change a lot of people’s perspective as it’s not as easy as the armchair quarterbacks seem to think. I agree that there are some new semi drivers out there that make me wonder how they got their license. I was fortunate that I went to a good local driving instructor before I got my class one. I learned a lot more about safe driving from him than in my high school drivers ed.
Being a farmer that also has to move my big equipment down the highway I can tell you it’s about as stressful as it gets. In my eyes I have seen some really stupid things out of car drivers too. If I had a choice I wouldn’t move down a hwy at all but I have to. There are times I drive an extra 5 miles of gravel roads just to avoid certain small sections of hwy. All the flashing lights and signals in the world don’t seem to register with some people what is going on. It has gotten to the point that I have to stop completely or take up the whole hwy so that people do not pass me while I’m making a left hand turn as they don’t watch the signal lights. I do my best not to pull out in front of someone but it also takes awhile to get that equipment up to speed. I am sorry if I ever held you up but don’t try and hurt us both in the process of trying to save a couple minutes by getting around me. Also if you meet a big piece of equipment on the hwy, SLOW DOWN and give us room to get by. Courtesy works two ways.
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This is typical of internet discussions. I did not say EVERY farmer, nor every semi driver was bad at their jobs, poor drivers or unsafe. What I did say is there are a big enough percentage of bad drivers in both groups that you can't just assume it was the semi driver that was at fault.
When I was young, I drove Class 1 and 2 for 10 years. I spent 4 years driving Edmonton ETS bus. I have driven more than 4 million of miles in my total driving career. I have never had an at fault accident or not at fault and have had one moving violation. There are LOTS of people just like me. WE are however no longer the majority and need to watch out even closer for the ones that got their license from a cracker jack box or bribed the issuer.