Where are you? I can’t see you there

Hel­lo … I can’t see you! Ped­es­trians. Cyc­lists. Small car driv­ers. I can’t see you.

You may think I am ex­ag­ger­at­ing, but this is the hon­est truth. I can­not count the num­ber of times, every day, that I am sur­prised by some­thing ap­pearing be­side me, the ex­act mo­ment when I thought it was safe to change lanes.

It’s not just me. It seems to be the at­ti­tude of those who do not drive a big rig, that just be­cause they can see the rig, they as­sume the rig driv­er can see them. I’m here to tell you folks, it’s not the case.

But John, you say, a com­mer­cial rig seems to have mir­rors every­where!

Trust me, try as we might, work­ing all the angles, con­stant­ly ad­justing and read­justing the mir­rors, and just try­ing to cov­er every sin­gle bit of space around us, it is phys­ic­al­ly not pos­sible to see all the real es­tate around a rig.

The big­gest blind spot is on the rig’s pas­sen­ger side. Tucked up close to that side of the rig is the hardest spot for us to cov­er. It’s just the phys­ic­al angle of the spot.

Sure, some rig driv­ers say they never have a prob­lem with that blind spot, but those are the same driv­ers who say they don’t swear, don’t drink al­co­hol, don’t smoke, but do be­lieve in the tooth fairy.

When I am driv­ing the truck and trail­er, I de­test any­one on  two wheels. The No. 1 rea­son is cyc­lists/motor­cyc­lists like to get a free ride by tuck­ing in close and let­ting the vor­tex from my trail­er suck them down the road. One tap of the brakes on my six axles, and it’s a messy time for that two-wheel­er.

The No. 2 rea­son is the bi­cycle or mo­tor­cy­cle is so skin­ny, my mir­rors cannot see it. That vehicle needs to be fur­ther back and al­most on the paint­ed lane mark­ers be­fore I can see it. But no. They are dead cen­tre, be­hind me. Blind spot. The death zone.

Here’s a super scary one. A bi­cycle/mo­tor­cy­cle rider, go­ing under an over­pass, on a sunny day, be­side a 22-wheel­er. It’s a dis­as­ter, wait­ing to hap­pen.

Go­ing from bright sun­light to semi dark­ness back to bright sun­light, the driv­er of the rig is mo­men­tar­i­ly blinded, and so just hangs on and often, just hopes for the best. Hopes every­one has re­moved their sun­glass­es and are on their best be­hav­iour. I don’t need to say any­more, do I? We both know all about hu­man be­hav­iour.

Re­mem­ber when you were a teen­ag­er, and you used to brag about never hav­ing bro­ken a bone. Never had stitches. Never this, never that. You thought that bad things al­ways hap­pened to other folks. That’s the hu­man na­ture I’m en­coun­tering every day.

Just be­cause you can see me …

What this all boils down to is a total lack of com­muni­ca­tion.

The gen­er­al pub­lic has never been taught to re­spect the big rigs. I know. I had to take driv­ing les­sons too, and I was never taught a sin­gle thing about liv­ing with com­mer­cial rigs. Why is that?

What’s worse is that I wasn’t re­quired to get spe­cial train­ing when I first started rid­ing a mo­tor­cy­cle on pub­lic high­ways. I kid you not. Even I am sur­prised I am still here. I was an idiot on a Triumph, I sur­vived, but I still don’t know how.

I’d be a happy camp­er if some group, or­gan­i­za­tion, or even a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed agency would make man­da­to­ry, that every­one at­tend, write an exam and pass, with at least an 80 per cent grade, be­fore be­ing grant­ed new or re­newed licenses. The two-day man­da­to­ry course would teach every­one the short-com­ings of life be­hind the wheel of a com­mer­cial rig. How you’ll die, or how to live with 22-wheel­ers.

Yep, I have a great im­agin­a­tion. Mother al­ways used to tell me that. But, I am an eter­nal opti­mist, be­liev­ing, where there is a will, there is a way.

Late­ly I’ve come to the point in my life where I am starting to won­der if I am the only one out here who cares about my fel­low driv­ers. Every day is an­other damn bat­tle of “I dare ya.”

Just re­mem­ber this. If I can’t see you, I can’t play can I, and real­ly, I hate playing games.

I could fill a news­paper with sto­ries about life on the road, but why not share yours with read­ers? Send them to Driving edi­tor An­drew McCredie at amccredie@sunprovince.com