Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/85388
It's a jungle worth a damn. You and I both know it's true, and I'll admit S straightaway that it's a hard pill for many of us to swallow. After all, Americans may not have invented the automobile, but we certainly took the ball and ran with it once we got the basic concept. More than 100 years later, there still is no more car-crazy culture on this planet than the United States. And you'd think that a nation as in love with cars, trucks and motorcycles as the Unit- ed States eventually would produce a genera- tion of motorists that could – you know – actually operate a motorized vehicle in a safe and efficient way while sharing a road with other like-minded automotive enthusiasts. But that's not the way it is at all. That fact was driven home to me recently when I had to drive to a trade show with two of my colleagues from CCJ's offices in Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Louisville, Ky. Our drive to Louisville on a quiet Tuesday morning was We need better, more comprehensive and nationally- integrated uneventful: We jumped on Interstate 20/59 in Tuscaloosa, picked up I-65 in Birmingham and made the run north in six hours. The weather was clear. Traffic was light. It was such a low-stress drive all the way around that one of my coworkers stayed behind the wheel the whole trip. The story on our return trip three driver training. 30 COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | JUNE 2012 days later – on a Friday – was com- pletely different. For starters, the weather was bad: Wind and patchy rain ranging from a light drizzle to torrential downpours had slowed traffic on the steaming slick roads to a jittery crawl. To make matters worse, the ➡ Car-crazy culture. Americans love their automo- biles more than anyone else. roads were crammed with spring breakers – minivans with cargo carriers on the roof and countless cars bedecked with rear-window stickers proudly proclaiming schools like Notre Dame, Purdue, Louisville and Wisconsin – all headed south on I-65 and not stopping until they hit the Gulf Coast. It was, in a word, insanity. The weather, the amount of ➡ Unsafe drivers. We aren't properly trained on how to handle our vehicles. ➡ Time for change. Four-wheel drivers should be as well-trained as truckers. traffic and the constant weaving in and out of lanes were bad enough. Now all we needed were a few wrecks and some construction work, and we'd be in business – and, oh boy, did we get those in spades. All told, we ended up stewing in parking lot-style traffic for more than two hours during the drive as a consequence of five separate – and major – accidents. We were forced off the in- out there Truck drivers are getting safer, but what about everybody else? omebody's got to say it, and I guess it's going to be me: Americans can't drive