A Passion for Running

Welcome to the home of Mark aka The Running Blogfather – a 40 year-old dad, husband and marathon runner who's beaten injury and is on the comeback trail!

non-running story + rant

passion for running category: running on Thursday, October 21 2004

John posted on the subject of bad drivers today. It was the thing that got me to write this completely non-running related rant.

The story revolves around our recent trip to Victoria. It’s about a 14 hour drive between Edmonton and Victoria. By and large, Lori and I had an uneventful drive. Well, uneventful with one two-hour exception…

We were only a few minutes past rainy, foggy Mount Robson when the highway suddenly came to a dead stop. I mean a complete stop. Vehicles had their engines shut off for what seemed like a mile ahead of us.

We saw a sign up ahead. It looked like construction might be the problem. However, moments later a gal drove up and informed us there’d been an accident and we’d likely be waiting up to 1 1/2 hours. We were not pleased would be putting it mildly. It was about 6:00 PM, we’d been on the road for over nine hours and had another five hours ahead of us. Even so, we reminded ourselves it could have been worse – we could have been in the accident.

After a few minutes, we decided to walk up the hill and try to get close enough to the accident to see what happened. We walked about a 1/2 mile. The scene from the top looking down the other side was like the one at the end of Field of Dreams. The one where miles and miles of car headlights are coming toward the field. Likewise, for us there was no end to the line of cars in sight. I figured we were in the last mile of a 3 mile line up.

We couldn’t see the accident so we began making our way back. On the way down, a fellow shared details with us about the accident. Apparently, a semi-truck driver had fallen asleep, crossed the line and ran head-on into a half-ton. We were told both drivers were dead with a possibility of more fatalities.

We continued on our way and met up with two truck drivers who asked if we knew what had happened. Lori and I told them about the accident, that it involved a semi-truck and everyone was dead. Then I said, “the good news is we get to go home tonight”.

Do you know what one of the truck drivers said in response?

“Yeah, if we ever get out of here!”

Lori and I just looked blank-faced at the driver. We were shocked. Did he even hear what we said? Two people, maybe more, were DEAD. D-E-A-D. Deceased. Expired. No longer with us. Departed. Finito. We couldn’t believe someone could be that out of tune with the most important thing in life – that being the part about being alive.

We carried on noticing that traffic in the opposite lane was now moving and hoped we would soon be as well. It wasn’t soon. In fact, it took another hour before we were past the accident. It was was absolutely horrific. There were pieces of truck the size of my fist strewn around the highway for at least a half mile. Virtually nothing of the smaller truck remained.

For a moment, we breathed a sigh of relief. We were on the road again and would be in our beds at 1:00 a.m. Not as nice as 11:00 p.m., but at least we were going home.

The relief didn’t last.

Those damn, frickin, son-of-a-bitch truck drivers decided they were going to make up those lost two hours if it killed us all.

I feel like I need to say this: I am not afraid to drive at night. Driving in the mountains doesn’t bother me at all either. Even on curvy, narrow highways. Driving in the rain is OK. Fog can be a bit scary but this…

The speed limit was 100km/60 miles per hour. We were on a curvy, hilly rainy mountain highway at night. Now add in those fucking drivers.

Note to the Reader: That right there was the first time I’ve ever used the f-word on this blog and it’s for good reason.

With a two-mile line up of cars in front of my own, these truckers were intent on passing me and everyone in front of me and were doing it above the speed limit under all the road conditions listed above. One truck passed me going up a hill with a curve dead ahead! What the hell is up with that?! So, you pass me. Now what? 500 cars and semi-trucks to go? How in God’s green earth can you make up time in a line like that?

Those truckers made it absolute HELL during the time it took to drive to Jasper (one hour). The last one followed me not more than ten feet off my ass for over 40 minutes! At Jasper, we pulled off the road for ten minutes (the first place you CAN pull off the road), took a pee break and let all those bastards go by.

What makes these truckers so nuts? I think my wife Lori hit it on the head. It’s the pressure we put on them. Everything has to be here now. You carry that down the line and who does the blame fall on if things aren’t delivered now? Truckers, that’s who. We are all in such a frickin rush for everything aren’t we?

It’s no wonder so many people get killed on highways.

Okay. Rant over.




3 Comments

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Comment by Jon in Michigan

Thursday October 21, 2004 @

I think I have to respectfully disagree with the BlogMother (Lori). I don’t think its the pressure we put on them. I think it really comes from their employers that drive them so that they can beat their competition. I don’t think peoples’ wants dictate that drive, but the greed of the people who try to fullfil it.

Example. I want $1M (I really do, you know), and some fool goes out and kills as many people as he can to rob them and get me the money. Whose fault is it that those people died? My point here (which seems to have become twisted), is that there will always be people out there who will do unscupulous and generally bad things to get what they want (more profits, increased business), and the blame for that behavior lies with them.

If everyone behaved in a rational manner in business, things would be different. But because a few bad apples will do things the not-so-nice way, the rest of the good folks will follow suit just to stay alive. Before you know it, every truck in the country is driving like a lunatic to do what their bosses ask of them.

I’m not sure I would want to be endangering the lives of other people for any amount of money. Along those same lines (and to completely change my position on this), maybe we shouldn’t be willing to hand our cash over to companies that behave in an unscrupulous manner, whether its encouraging drivers to act like lunatics, dumping 1000′s of kilotons of trash in landfills instead of reducing waste, or employing child slave labor in foreign countries to make cheaper products.

OK, so bottom line, companies need to find ethical ways to bring products to market and to enforce a strict code of ethics in their employees. Likewise, consumers need to purchase products from ethically behaving companies to discourage unethical behavior.

Or else don’t blame me if you get hit by a truck in Canada. :)

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Comment by Alex

Thursday October 21, 2004 @

Yeah, this thread brings up a couple of interesting points, and some of my hot buttons. (Sorry for the long rant!)

In the US we have this stupid thing called the lawsuit lottery. One way some people choose to play is to own stock in companies and then sue those companies if they don’t think the companies are doing everything possible to enhance their profits, for instance, by pushing the boundaries of the rules and ethics to the absolute limits. For instance, I always thought a few of the financial things a company I used to work for were a little odd, but I came to realize that all the other companies in the industry did the same things, which were “perfectly legal” of course, just potentially misleading, and if one company chose not to play that way, their earnings reports, etc, would look bad compared to the others leading to a decline in share price and their shareholders would find out why and sue. The irony, of course, is that those same people would later turn around and complain about the lack of ethics in business.

It’s a challenging issue. I surmise that if all the companies played by the rules all the time, a lot of things would be more expensive than they are today, and to most of the population, regardless of what they say, cost of goods and services are a stronger motivators than anything else. It’s tough. There are a couple companies I have refused to deal with for a while because I have seen them do some pretty disagreeable things with my own eyes, but I fear that if I diligently dug up the research I would find that same kind of thing happening in a lot more places. And lately, my tune has changed, because I have seen how the people in charge of those companies really at the mercy of the large shareholders. If the management won’t do what the shareholders want, the shareholders will simply replace the management with people who will. Ultimately, it is people that make these decisions. The company itself is just some papers. And at the end of the day we all as a society endorse the behavior.

Anyway, on the original topic. One of the scariest driving days I ever had was a really windy day, and I was driving on the intersate. The big trucks were barreling down it like they always do, but I could see that they were having difficulty staying on the road because of the wind coming sideways across the road. I saw one in front of me weaving side to side, and I was like, man, I better get past this guy before he crashes. I went way wide and got by, and then I saw him pull over behind me. That was a smart one. A few miles later, the traffic came to a complete stop (for a few hours!), and of course, it turned out to be a semi that had blown over and caused a big crash. I think those guys are under enormous pressure, but it seems it would take a major shift in human nature to ease it!

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Comment by Deene

Friday October 22, 2004 @

When I take road trips I like to drive at night and it can get pretty scary in the mountains with those truckers especially going downhill. There was talk here about law requiring drivers to meet a required rest/drive time ratio to reduce accidents but I don’t remember the outcome. Truckers were definitely against it.

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