Making Friends With America's "Knights Of The Road"

Well, that escalated quickly.

A modest proposal to keep trucks in the right lane on Interstates --- you know, like they do in Europe --- has thousands of people calling for my death.

Well, maybe that's a little harsh.

But they are demanding that I go get my CDL or something and spend years driving a tractor-trailer so I can understand their suffering.

Which I ain't gonna do.

The comments on R&T's Facebook page are a real-life realization of every latte-sipping Bay Area psuedo-intellectual's cherished blue-collar stereotypes. Thousands of aggrieved truckers telling me that staying in the right lane would lead to untold death and carnage --- never mind that such is not the case where the law keeps trucks to the right. Wives and girlfriends of truckers calling me every name in the book and then ejaculating long uninterrupted mega-paragraphs of country-music paeans to their hard-workin' menfolk. Rednecks asking me to fight them. There are even people suggesting that the fact that I drive a six-cylinder Accord virtually proves my love of chuggin' the old man-penis.

I don't mind the abuse. When you write something for public consumption, you should expect public response. In fact, I welcome every opinion and every reader I can get, even all the people who swear they're canceling their subscriptions. I just wish I could get people to read the article and respond to what I'm saying, rather than to their own internal low-resolution view of it.

As an example, I wrote that "When you consider the sleep deprivation and drug use to which truckers often fall victim, the argument for keeping them out of the way and restricting them to a lower speed becomes nearly unassailable." The first response to this?

Wow, THAT was retarded! In the 15 years I drove tractor/trailer, I never once used drugs, I never had an accident, and I saw the biggest morons in four wheelers pull some really idiotic maneuvers the even Ripley wouldn't believe! Take for instance, the woman driving with one leg on the dash, and the other on the door. I'd call that STUPID! How about the jerk, who wanted to pass trucks in the construction zone? He was driving INSIDE the cones, where fortunately, no construction workers standing. I'd call that STUPID! How about the everyday DOUCHBAG, who passes the trucks that are in the RIGHT LANE, then pulls 2 inches in front of them to get off at that exit (and you can't tell me YOU haven't done that a few hundred times mr. jackoff baruth)? Takes a lot of intelligence to be that STUPID! Here's a thought, Why don't the moronic retarded FOUR WHEELERS drive in the RIGHT LANE, and let the truckers drive the left?

You know what, Mr. Marshall Glasgow of Joplin, MO? I have not done that a few hundred times. I avoid trucks like they are radioactive because I learned as a motorcyclist many years ago that retreaded tires tend to blow up and kill people. I can honestly say that I have never been the cause of a trucker having to slam on his brakes.

But that doesn't mean that millions of motorists don't pose a threat to truckers, just like Mr. Glasgow's ostensible clean-as-a-whistle approach to "truckstop speed" doesn't mean that truck drivers are all clean as a whistle. Not that he understands that.

I've come to believe that a one-year mandatory course in logic and rhetoric would benefit the vast majority of America's high-school students.

Particularly if a bullwhip was part of the curriculum.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to return to reading the comments. They're stupid, and they're funny, but they are mine.