Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/778830
VOICES 14 | Overdrive | February 2017 The utility of the CB — or lack thereof when it's turned off or not there to begin with — was evident the evening of Jan. 10, as driver Scott LeVan ran westbound on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania. Weather and road conditions got dicey and eventually deadly, he says. LeVan noticed eastbound traffi c slowing, backing up with a bro- ken-down tractor-trailer on the shoulder near mile marker 165. "I was yelling on the radio … just before it took place telling you all to spread out because you have a broken-down semi on the shoulder, and traffi c is coming to a stop," LeVan wrote in something of a message to his fellow drivers via Overdrive. His warning got nary a response in the moment as he passed. "Get with the program, drivers," he says. "There is no excuse for you not to have a CB." He later learned two truckers lost their lives in a fi ery wreck at that location. According to news reports, a truck stopped in the right lane near the disabled rig on the shoulder was struck by a third truck, causing a chain reaction involving multiple vehicles behind them. LeVan goes on to describe another eastbound accident down the line, which he says had just been cleared. "Here is where I blame Pennsylvania troopers," he says, for opening both lanes too quickly, encouraging traffi c to remain bunched up but at high speed. "You should have only opened one lane until traffi c got thinned out, so you all are in part to blame," he addressed the police. Again he pleaded over the radio, yelling "for them to spread out, because it was getting really bad, with freezing rain. If that was me over there, I would have pulled off , taken a nap for about two hours, and then got back on when traffi c was more spaced out." LeVan did in fact pull off a short time after. He heard about the east- bound shutdown when he woke. Finally, he urges his fellow drivers to "use your head" in such situations. If you don't, "You will be in a casket sure enough." An unheeded warning, a deadly crash That's how Overdrive reader Philip Kuffner sees his work. He off ers three videos from his dashcam as plenty of evidence: 1) A school bus driver hugging the dividing line wasn't "sure where to drive in Eagan, Minnesota," Kuff ner said. 2) A fellow trucker, passing in a no-passing zone in light-snow conditions (photo, left), took off Kuff ner's left-front mirror on Yellowhead Highway near Dafoe, Saskatchewan. 3) Another trucker, on Highway 75 North near Morris, Manitoba, apparently "does not know how to enter a divided road," Kuff ner says, describing the hairy evening scene and big slowdown behind the off ending merge (shown in the image). Catch Kuff ner's highway-follies trio and more views through readers' windshields, or upload your own, via OverdriveOnline. com/dashcamcentral. Always 'an adventure' on the road Had more east- bound truckers that fateful night had their radios on and heeded Scott LeVan's west- bound warning, LeVan believes, it might have saved more than one life.