Challenge

Today's Thoughts 5/10/12 Challenge
By Jeff Head

Ok,Ok, I get it. The FMCSA has a job and that job is to save as many lives as it can out on the road from accidents with big trucks. I get it. Heck, you get it. Everybody gets it. I do not believe that there is one living soul on this planet that does not get it. But, and this is a big but, there is one thing I do not get. Why Does the FMCSA put more value on one life over the other? Face it, if you are a trucker, your life means diddlysquat to our government.

Let me see if I can explain this so that everyone can understand just what it is that I am talking about today. The FMCSA makes a rule for the expressed purpose of ensuring that only the safest of truck drivers remain on the road. For each rule that it makes, a certain number of drivers are no longer qualified to drive a truck. Therefore, the FMCSA figures that for each rule it makes, a certain number of lives saved out on the highway can and should be expected. But, what happens to the drivers that find themselves sitting at the house without a job? Does the FMCSA have any idea what happens to this person as they suddenly find themselves without a paycheck, financially ruined. I bet they do not even have a clue if they even care.

So, what happens to a driver that suddenly finds themselves in this situation. Well, the stock market crash back in Nineteen Twenty Nine had people jumping out of the windows committing suicide when they found out that their lives hit such a wall. I wonder if the FMCSA has ever done any studies to follow up on this. To see how many drivers or should I say ex-drivers have chosen this way out to cope with the life saving regulations of the FMCSA.

Financial instability is also one of the number one causes of divorce in this country. Couples finding that they are suddenly unable to pay their bills ripping what used to be a happy home apart. Spouses and children forced onto the government doles with any hopes of a college education for the kids smashed.

Retirement funds used up trying to hold what used to be a happy house together. Sure, a company driver may be able to retrain and unemployment benefits might be available. An owner operator if they are lucky could sell their trucks and find some cash to go on for a bit. However, the stress of being torn out of a life style and being thrown to the wolves for no reason other than you might, repeat, might get into an accident, is a lot for any individual to handle. I can just about bet that the FMCSA has not taken any of this and a lot more if you think about it into account when they add up the lives they claim to save.

Moving on, they count saving the life of one person driving a car out on the road. A driver that statistics show causes the wreck eighty percent of the time in exchange for sending some trucker home that has probably saved more lives with their expert ability to miss these clowns and no one even cares if the driver is found hanging off his closet door next week. Why is my life as a trucker any less valuable then the life of any other driver out on that highway? Why is the damage that I might do to them any more valuable than the damage the government might do to me? I have done nothing but worked to save lives and I certainly bust my butt to stay within the law.

I get it, studies show all kinds of things and if we follow what they say, we can make the highways safer. Cool beans as my sister in law would say. The laws of probability say that if you do something long enough, something bad will happen. So, I want to challenge the folks up there at the FMCSA to stand behind how they regulate for us truckers. I know that if I drive this truck long enough, I will eventually be involved in a fatal wreck at some point in time. Now being that they believe that I should be pulled off the road to prevent this, I challenge the folks at the FMCSA to guarantee that they will never be involved in a fatality wreck in their personal vehicle, or turn in their own driver's license and car before they themselves kill someone. It seems to me that if they are interested in saving lives, they themselves should be the first to stand up and take a stand for safer highways and their own form of keeping them that way.


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