To address those comments.
- Yes, there's lots of us. The greater majority you see in Toronto are just passing through. The 401 is the busiest highway in north america, and trust me, a lot of those drivers have no desire to see Toronto except when it's in their mirrors. Again, in a perfect world every driver on the face of the planet would avoid big cities during rush hours, but that's never going to happen as there's a million variables that make it impossible.
- Yes, we are slow to accelerate, but we try to have to do it as little as possible by maintaining inertia. That said, when we get stuck in traffic and the centipede effect starts it's inevitable we become part of it, and if you try to maintain a constant speed and "smooth" the centipede 5 cars will jam themselves into the open space you leave making it impossible. Trust me. When we're at speed and a vehicle jumps in front of us and slows down (often for no apparent reason, it's frustrating as ****) we loose inertia and it takes a lot of time for us to build it back up. Cut us off and we have to slam on the brakes, seame thing. When you weigh as much as we do inertia rules the world, but amongst ourselves we are exceptionally good at avoiding situations that require us to loose it - throwing cars into the mix changes all that as they simply don't understand things. In other words, car drivers are almost always at fault for creating the very problems that frustrate car drivers.
- Unwillingness to yield? Often inability. Come sit in the passenger seat for a day with a driver of a semi and you'd soon experience what we deal with. Put on your signal to change lanes to let traffic merge? Some cager often immediately (it seems almost instinctually) accelerate to block as they don't want to get stuck behind the big evil truck, so we no longer HAVE the option to move over to let you merge. Sometimes moving over puts us in a situation where we'd loose so much momentum that we'd become an obstacle in the middle lane (ie, someone in the middle land going drastically slower than us) and then we get stuck out there with traffic blowing past us on the right, we can't get back up to speed propertly, and it presents a safety issue. Don't get me started on the cage drivers who don't even know how to merge properly to begin with.
When a driver can safely move over for merging traffic, the professionals amongst us do so. We have no desire to tangle with you, intentionally or accidentally, and onramps are famous for accidents, but you have to understand that often there's things beyond our control or ability that prevents it. In the end, in that case, it's still (by the letter of the law) the responsibility of
Are there idiots amongst us? Yep, and without doubt some use the size of their vehicles to their advantage, but to paint the 2 or 3 idiots you may see out there as to suggest the other 500 you never noticed are all the same isn't fair. As with many situations there's often reasons for our actions, but unless you're in our drivers seat you'd never understand them.
Lastly:
Blackfin said:
Statistically (Feel free to look it up) the overwhelming majority of accidents involving trucks are caused by car drivers. Do car drivers loose in such situations? Absolutely..but the same can be said for Motorcycle vs car, car vs train, car vs bus, etc etc - we don't automatically demonize the other vehicle if the person who caused the accident to begin with got hurt as a result, do we?
When a motorcycle crashes often people die as well and the same thing happens. There's just less to clean up...but again, I've always refused to feel guilty about a truck accident when I hear that it was directly caused by a car. Yes, I know it inconveniences people and it sucks, hell, I've got tied up in truck accident scenes myself and don't enjoy it, but I keep things in perspective - not the truckers fault.
Good perspective. What looks better to people in this thread...
This?
....or this....at every third intersection all through the entire city, since some suggest direct rail to retail is the solution?
