Thursday, October 01, 2009

Get On Your Soapbox #14

Before I head off for the weekend, I shall leave you all with a rant......;)

There's one thing about living up here that really annoys me....

TRUCKS!

The Great Northern Highway is full of them and they think they own the road. Honestly all of the psycho truck drivers I have ever encountered have been on the Great Northern Highway. When I've been travelling to Albany on Albany Highway, I have seen some trucks pull over to let a line of traffic go past! How nice is that! There's zero chance of that up here.

Honestly do truckies think they're above the law or something? One time I was driving to work and I was stuck behind three trucks. The road had a double line but still they started mucking around, overtaking each other.

Last year, I had probably one of my most scariest experiences ever involving a truckie. I was on my way to Perth after work. It was dark and the road was windy. I kept encountering truck after truck that would not turn off their high beams for oncoming traffic. Then suddenly a truck came roaring up behind me with its high beams still on and started tailgating me. I was doing the speed limit, the truckie was obviously speeding. Not only was I blinded by the light, I was blinded by the lights of oncoming trucks as well so I had to slow down a bit on a narrow and windy patch of road. I was too scared to slow down in case he rear-ended me because he was certainly showing no sign of slowing down and I was terrified of being run off the road. Eventually the truckie roared past me and by this stage I was so angry, I turned my high beams on and thought, 'Take this, loser!"

Suddenly he swerved off the road and I seized my chance to overtake him. As I drove past, he opened the driver's door and hung out by one arm, screaming abuse. Instinct took over and I took off, not stopping until I reached Perth.

Both my mum and Duncan told me off for flashing my lights at him, saying I only made a bad situation worse and that if he'd caught me I could have been beaten up or dead in a car accident. I know they're right but I just saw red and I'm so sick of tools like that on the road, thinking they can intimidate smaller vehicles. Yeah I know a lot of truckies are probably on drugs but that's no excuse. I'm sick of bleeding hearts defending them, saying they need to take drugs because they have such long, tiring stints behind the wheel. So what? That's no excuse to behave like a psychopath. They're not the only ones on deadlines and I'm glad the cops up here are clamping down on dangerous driving from truckies.

I'm standing up for drivers of minis, Barinas and little Accents like mine! It's time the truckies, bus drivers and Perth people who drive four wheel drives when they don't need them be taught a lesson!

1 comment:

Iris Flavia said...

Times must´ve changed! When we were travelling in 95 and 99 we never had troubles with truckies at all!

Boy. That sounds bad and dangerous!