Question of the Day: Do Big Trucks Make You Nervous?

I got two fears, bad drivers, and people who think that some particular class of vehicle denotes an air of danger and/or safety. The first group of idiots are the source of the problem. It's not the vehicle, it's the driver. While there is certainly a difference in mass as well as handling, those easily known characteristics are only slightly variable compared to the incredible swing of quality of judgment and skill between one driver and another. The second group of people are part of the reason the problem persists. A Ducati can kill you just as dead as a Peterbuilt. Anything in between is all the same. How does anyone expect the country to be run any better if we persist in blaming "things" instead of insisting on individual responsibility? Even a buick century can be driven safely, though I rarely see one driven that way.

When I used to live in Reno, NV and did a few road trips a month over Donner Summit, I always had a healthy respect for big trucks. Seems that, for the most part, the people driving that route knew what they were about (I'd hope so, especially in the winter!). As long as you were smart (no tailing, not cutting them off, no riding in blind spots), everything was good. In the last five years or so (and I've been in Phoenix, AZ for three), big trucks now scare me. Most of the time, the guys are on their cell phones, hardly paying attention to the road. That scares the crap out of me. You've got a vehicle -that big- and you're on your _cell phone_?! I just move away as quickly and safely as possible, and keep an eye out for any trouble they cause. I suspect truckers on freight routes (I-80, etc) are still better than the yahoos you see doing in-town stuff.

P71_Crown Vic: Using one example of a crash where the driver of a Crown Vic survived proves nothing. In my home state of Connecticut a semi *drove over* a parked Crown Vic and destroyed it utterly, killing the officer in it. Also I've seen news reports of a Subaru WRX (a compact sedan) that was crushed between two semis much like that Crown Vic was. The driver had to be cut out of the car, but was unharmed aside from minor cuts & scrapes. Does that mean a WRX is safer than a Crown Vic? No, it means both drivers were very lucky to not be the usual car vs. truck statistic. If a truck looks like this after a crash with another truck: http://www.wreckedexotics.com/newphotos/bad/bad829.shtml what makes you think a large car is any safer against a truck than a small car?

Trucks and the people driving them scare the crap out of me. Anytime I have to pass a truck on a highway, I do it as quickly as possible. A lot of truck drivers seem to have problems staying in their lanes even when they're not passing someone, and a lot of them don't signal. I'm sure there are a lot of good truck drivers, but it seems there are a lot of bad ones too, which makes it much worse for the good drivers that actually respect the road and the other drivers they share it with.