Another one..ya just can't fix stupid..

[ironglow]

  You guys who drive truck or operate around heavy equipment already know this fact and most of the public is aware of it also..  That fact is;
      If you can't see the driver..he can't see you!  Which brings up another point;
 
 Some folks learn by hearing, some by seeing..others have to pee on the electric fence for themselves!
   Here we have a suit brought up for a woman ditzy enough to try to stop a D-9 with her small body..not too swift..  Almost for sure the operator couldn't see her (esp with an armored D-9) and perhaps figured she would be smart enough to get out of the way anyway.
  Her family even tried to sue Caterpillar Tractor...tossed out. 
    She is apparently one of those continually seeking trouble, since she was one of the American nincompoops who tried to run ships through the Gaza blockade.
  Below see armored D-9..if her buds, the Palis weren't into the habit of shooting at tractor operators there would have been no need for the armor..allowing better vision for operator.  Perhaps her Pali pals arer responsible for her death!
    "Play with fire, you may get burned'..        Below; see armored D-9, that woman would have been at best, about twice as tall as that shadow on the blade..;
 

[Old Syko]

Most on the roads today must feel they can't be bothered to even look.  Too busy talking, texting, eating, or whatever to be bothered with the paltry existence of someone else.  Truck drivers are often touted my some as being poor drivers when just the opposite is true.  In reality the vast majority of them are very professional and skilled. 


AS for peeing on the fence.  Mythbusters claims it doesn't work.  Funny thing.  My FIL, may he RIP, proved just the opposite while hunting at night some years ago.  I saw a bright blue flash just before the screams began.  Yes he was the kind of guy who learned many lessons that way.

[ironglow]

  Right on, OS;
      Many drivers are like the woman in the news article..ignorant of the vision problems etc.  I have heard some 4-wheelers complain that, after staying right beside a truck for miles, the truck driver put on his right turn signal and started pulling into the right lane.  They were ignorant of the fact that in most cases, it is illegal for a truck to "hang out in the hammer lane".
   Some even think tat 80,000 pounds should be able to stop as quickly as 3,000 pounds..and that to their own detriment..

[Old Fart]

There's good ones and bad ones. I've seen it all. Doesn't really matter what they are driving. Some stupid stuff. Big difference is there's so many more of both on the roads today.

[SHOOTALL]

When in Boy Scouts I saw a guy pizz on an eletric fence , he got a ride in an ambulance .
Truck drivers hum . Like every other segment of the driving world there are good ones and bad ones and many in the middle. It all depends on which one you cross paths with . I drive about 50-60000 miles per year I cross paths with all of the kinds . Some show profesonalism others shouldn't have a lic.
As example here on rt 60 west of Richmond 5 trucks were involved in an accident , 3 killed . Two trac. trl were hauling sewage out to put on fields, one trac trl was hauling logs to the mill and two were dump trucks heading to load. The guy driving the log truck like many got paid by the load so he speeded and seldom stopped ( they have to make several trips a day to make money) . Well log truck driver had to tinkle and instead of stopping he tried to tinkle in a bottle while going down a 2 land road at 60 + mph and hit a poop truck head on . All the other trucks were following to close and ended up in the accident . the wreck covered about a 1/2 mile of highway when parts of trucks stopped moving.
I ask what kind of professional is this ? I know other drives who also tinkle in a bottle and how many eat and drive ? Then there are the Budwiser beer trucks that are top of the line and all decked out . The drivers get to pick out any truck they want if they go a million miles with out an incident . So like I say there are good and bad just depends on which one you cross paths with   

[saddlebum]

This reminds me of a time years ago when I was passed over for running a Cat 988 rubber tired loader. It's  the second largest loader that Cat made at that time, with a 10 yd bucket. Now it's the third largest.
 
ANYWAY, I got passed over to run it for a guy that was a drinking buddy of the boss and had little or no experience. In less than a week, he backed up over his own pickup and destroyed it. As you can see from the picture, there is alot more glass in the loader than in that armored dozer. But when they are that big, it still has some huge blind spots. I tried not to laugh about it in front of the boss.
 
I could tell some other good ones about incidents that happened to me while driving construction trucks, but they're probably boring. I'll just say that I have never received a ticket or been found at fault, eventhough I have been in 4 or 5 'mishaps' over the years involving damage to some goofy drivers car. Sometimes, I felt like I was driving a magnet.
 
I noticed that armored dozer has smaller than normal windows too. They divided the normally single front windshield into three. Probably for bullet proof glass protection. I know from experience that those 9Ns are hard to see out of normally without those big dividers in the windows.

[SHOOTALL]

I know of one off road dump truck  driver that didconnected his raised bed alarm . When they finished putting new tires all the way around he backed into high voltage lines and blew out all the new tires 

[guzzijohn]

When I was in college I did a few trips back and forth between Minot and Brownsville trucking honey bees. Even though my total large truck experience is under 10K miles the lessons I learned stick with me to this day. It made me a much better and aware driver overall.
GuzziJohn

[Shu]

I give big rigs and heavy equipment room to operate. The sheer mass alone slightly bumping something can cuase damage, add any kind of speed and it is too easy to have fatalities. Drivers get tired and distracted, way to easy to get squished.
 
Gross vehicle weight has the right of way period.

[saddlebum]

If you think having to drive through a road construction zone is frustrating. Try doing it for 10 hours or so a day in one of these 100ft + long rigs. Five or six days a week all summer long. Eighteen speed transmission, dodging flaggers, cones, barrels, equipment, and workers. Getting in and out all day long while dodging frustrated drivers that HATE YOUR GUTS, and even try, sometimes, to get you in trouble. It's character building. Maybe not a pretty character, but character building none the less.
 
I just remembered I had these pics on my laptop. Two of the rigs I used to drive. The first two pics are of a bunch of us stuck on the highway waiting for a wreck to be cleared. One of ours and another 'oversized' rig that tried to navigate a sharp curve at the same time.