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.
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