By Suzanne Sparrow Watson<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A couple of years ago I was the victim of a photo radar camera. I say \u201cvictim\u201d because I was only going eight miles over the speed limit and besides, I was\u00a0busy making my grocery\u00a0list in my head.\u00a0 Obviously I didn’t have time to read that pesky speed limit sign.\u00a0 A few days after I was “flashed” I got a ticket in the mail along with a photo of me speeding.\u00a0 I was certain that they had the wrong person; I would never leave the house with that slap-dash make-up job and my hair in such disarray. But the car was definitely mine so I had to face the fact that\u00a0the slovenly person speeding down the road was me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My choice was to pay the fine, which would result in a car insurance premium resembling\u00a0the national debt, or attend an all-day traffic school.\u00a0 My friends encouraged me to do nothing and wait until the process-server found me.\u00a0 Perhaps I’ve watched one too many episodes of “Locked Up” but I didn’t want any part of evading the law; I signed up for traffic school.\u00a0 Traffic school, for those of you goody two shoes who have never been to one, consists of 8 hours of sitting in a cheap hotel room listening to someone drone on about arcane traffic laws, while sitting next to people who have committed God knows what crime.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, that might be a bit overly dramatic.\u00a0 Turns out, 95% of my class was there due to photo radar cameras.\u00a0 Our instructor, Rosie,\u00a0was a woman who had spent the better part of her working years as a truck driver.\u00a0 As in an 18 wheeler, big semi truck.\u00a0 She was married\u00a0and had raised her children while on the road.\u00a0 Rosie referred to herself as “the Mother Trucker”.\u00a0 She made the class as interesting as possible, which is quite\u00a0a feat when you\u2019re discussing curb colors and stopping distances.\u00a0 In short, Rosie was just the kind of person you’d love to meet at that greasy spoon truck stop because you know she’d offer you some Tums.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 During a portion of\u00a0her instruction (I believe it was concerning\u00a0merges or something – the whole\u00a0day was sort of lost on me) Rosie extolled the virtues of truck drivers.\u00a0\u00a0 At this point\u00a0a few people in class\u00a0felt it necessary to prolong our agony by relating their recent encounters with deranged truckers.\u00a0 On and on they babbled, each one trying to better the last, completely unaware that no one cared one whit about their stories.\u00a0 Imagine a cocktail party where you\u2019re cornered by the biggest bore in the room, only you don\u2019t have a cocktail.\u00a0 <\/em>Rosie finally took charge, telling us that everything we eat, wear or touch was at some point on a truck, and that we should be forever grateful for truckers.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In my overwhelming desire\u00a0to get\u00a0home I did not share my opinion then, but I\u2019m going to share it now:\u00a0 truck drivers are the biggest menace on the road today.\u00a0 Period. This was not always so.\u00a0 In fact, when I learned to drive truckers were considered\u00a0to be the safest<\/em> drivers.\u00a0 And nice – who among us didn\u2019t do an arm pump as a kid when passing a trucker, only to have him blast his horn and smile?\u00a0 When I was in my early twenties a friend and I were driving up to Squaw Valley on a Friday night and\u00a0were so engrossed in our discussion about skiing (okay, it was probably about ski patrol guys) that we didn\u2019t notice that the gas tank was emptying.\u00a0 As we\u00a0ascended Highway 80, \u00a0just shy of the summit and in complete darkness, our car gradually lost power and stopped on the side of the road.\u00a0 A few minutes later a truck driver pulled over to see if he could help.\u00a0 He quickly diagnosed the problem (we were idiots) and offered to take us up to Norden to the gas station.\u00a0 We merrily – and unthinkingly – hopped in his truck to go get gas.\u00a0 I shudder when I remember this – we were lucky we didn\u2019t end up in some sex slave harem in Indonesia.\u00a0 But such were the times – truck drivers were the good Samaritans of the road.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nowadays, as I have previously\u00a0related, my husband and I do a lot of driving trips.\u00a0 So as other people know airports, we know roads.\u00a0 I cannot even begin to count the number of\u00a0times over the past several years that we have been cut off by a speeding truck.\u00a0 On a trip last week we noticed a truck veering from one lane to the other.\u00a0 We cautiously approached him and as I peered in his window, he was eating a sandwich with one hand and holding a coke in the other.\u00a0 He was obviously under the mistaken impression that he could drive with his knees.\u00a0 I have seen truckers reading, texting, talking on the phone, rifling through paperwork, and snuggling up with their girlfriends (to put it delicately).\u00a0 Imagine – we used to think catching someone picking their nose was a noteworthy event!<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know that nowadays truckers are often freelancers and paid by the job; the faster they can complete their \u201crun\u201d the more money they make.\u00a0 I just wish they all had the same sensibilities as Rosie.\u00a0 In other words, we need more mother truckers on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Suzanne Sparrow Watson \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A couple of years ago I was the victim of a photo radar camera. I say \u201cvictim\u201d because I was only going eight miles over the speed limit and besides, I was\u00a0busy making my grocery\u00a0list … read more