Traffic Revision Ahead

Traffic cones are like an obstacle course for truck drivers. Or a competency test. At times, it’s a challenge, to miss them. But it’s kind of fun too. Non-truck drivers generally place the cones on the road and sometimes they leave enough room for a truck to negotiate a turn and sometimes they do not. Usually, it’s the latter.

As a truck driver, when I encounter traffic cones, I like to see if I can get my truck through without knocking any over. Just because I like a challenge. However, once I determine that there simply isn’t enough room, the game changes to something like bowling—it’s time to see how many cones I can take out!

But, if the cones are on the freeway, that’s a different story. Hitting anything, even a small rubberized plastic traffic cone is not advisable. At freeway speeds, those little cones become very destructive. So, I try NOT to hit the cones on the freeway. That doesn’t always work.

Last week, I was driving through the construction. The freeway was down to one lane, with cones set up to keep vehicles out of the work area. But someone had felt it necessary to run over quite a number of cones, scattering them all over the road. By the time they showed up in my headlights, it wasn’t really feasible to stop. I tried to dodge them the best I could but there were too many. A single lane, and no shoulder didn’t help matters any. I ended up hitting at least two of them.

I’d barely made it out of the construction when my warning light and buzzer were going off. I was losing air. After pulling over, I saw that one of the cones had taken out an airline to my brakes. The brake had tried to lock up but all it succeeded in doing was heating up the brake and wheel. By the time I’d gotten stopped, the wheel was glowing red-hot.

I called our mechanic and he came out to fix the truck. In a little over an hour I was on my way. Not bad. In fact, not near as bad as the guy who I assume was the one to originally hit the cones. His car was still there on the side of the road the next day—missing a bumper and a flat tire. Glad I was driving a truck! ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million.