There is little more annoying than two big rigs driving side by side for miles on a freeway or Interstate road, keeping faster-moving cars from passing and oblivious to traffic building up behind them. Blog from Senior Contributing Editor Tom Berg.
The "mad" trucker's horn and flashing lights got no results, so he made a bold but risky maneuver.
2 min to read
You know what gets my goat? (That's an old expression that means something really irks me.) Two big rigs, driving side by side for miles on a freeway or Interstate road, keeping faster-moving cars from passing, oblivious to traffic building up behind them.
And it’s usually because one trucker wants to go 1 or 2 mph faster than the other, but he can’t build up enough speed to complete a pass, yet he foolishly stays in the left lane. And the slightly slower trucker doesn’t have the consideration – the basic human kindness – to slow down a bit to let the other guy by so the logjam can be broken.
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Industry leaders have a Share the Road campaign aimed at motorists who must deal with big trucks. I think it should also apply to truck drivers.
Case in point: Two guys hogging the road on a stretch of Interstate 10 in Arizona and captured on a YouTube video. Two rigs from the same company were the culprits; in spite of the carrier’s name, their tractors are speed limited, so it’s not likely that one could go faster than the other, making the situation even more galling.
The irked parties behind the blockade included motorists, one of whom recorded the incident and uploaded the video to YouTube. And, there was a third trucker who decided to take corrective action. Watch it here.
Now, I certainly don’t encourage anyone to use the shoulder to pass because it’s plainly unsafe. It could’ve resulted in a collision, and the rig could’ve kicked up whatever debris was lying on that paved shoulder. It’s almost certainly illegal, and if a state trooper had seen the indignant trucker’s maneuver, the guy almost certainly would’ve gotten a citation with a fat fine. We can hope that the two inconsiderate drivers would also have gotten tickets.
And I should say that managers of the companies whose rigs and drivers were part of this incident almost certainly wouldn’t condone any of it.
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Now the rig in the left lane can pass and pull over into the right lane. Blockade broken!
Anyway, the irked third trucker got ahead of the slow guys. He then pulled in front of the trucker who should’ve helped the other guy pass, then slowed him down so his colleague could get ahead and pull into the right lane. This cleared the fast lane so following motorists could get by.
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