generalspeaking

Movie-Struck Long-Haul Drivers

Who knew? Well, it appears that France has more long-pull trucks on its roads than that of any other European country. The reason for that hasn't been explained, but it's an interesting little tidbit. Particularly in view of the fact that long-haul truckers, though so many of them claim to love their jobs, and enjoy driving, become bored with it all.

Who wouldn't? But it is their chosen line of work, after all.

And it's a line of work made incomparably more leisurely, let us say, by the technical advent of cruise control systems. Where a constant speed is maintained. And since that's the case, those long-distance drivers have ample opportunity to relax while they're behind the wheel. "Behind the wheel", broadly speaking. The wheel doesn't actually need them all that much, they figure.

And they seem to feel that this being the case, why not entertain themselves, permit themselves to be diverted, distracted from the boring long haul. Now, instead of watching the road ahead of them, they trust that the truck will do it all on its own. It steers, doesn't it? The driver has no need to keep an eye on the speedometer, nor his foot on the pedal.

So he puts his eyes to work elsewhere. On DVDs, for example. There's a lot of films that are most entertaining. And it's become such a common event for police officers to pull over long-haul drivers watching films that they confiscate DVD players, and issue fines of $2,000. Which hasn't seemed to stop the drivers; no fewer than 324 hauliers were caught viewing a DVD in 2010 in France.

One driver was practising on a set of drums. Another was using a little stove to cook a meal. Trouble is the screen light, which is what gives them away, can only be detected at night, by its glow, and even then, usually when police are posted above, on a bridge over a highway. Drivers put a portable device behind the steering wheel or install a DVD player in the dashboard.

They're supposed to be used only when the drivers are parked, not when they're driving. Last year in the U.S. a truck driver hit and killed a woman who had stopped her car after colliding with a deer. He was found guilty of manslaughter. He had been watching a porn movie, and hadn't seen the woman in her vehicle.

Labels: France, Human Fallibility, Societal Failures

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 10, 2012