I know some truck drivers will get mad at me for bringing all this up, and I will be the first to admit that many truck drivers are responsible, careful and generous drivers. If I am on a dangerous highway, especially at night or in the rain, I tend to get behind a sensibly-driven truck and follow it rather than go out on my own. And I am eternally grateful to the anonymous truck driver who stopped and helped my daughter the time her car broke down on I-75 at night on her way back to college. But the fact remains that drowsy truckers are responsible for highway accidents in which more than 750 people a year are killed and another 20,000 seriously injured. Truckers who oppose the black box say it is an invasion of their privacy.
Truck companies hate the idea because they say they'll have to hire more drivers.
Pretty flimsy excuses when we're talking highway safety here. I wonder what tune they'd be singing if their child had been one of the victims of sleepy drivers. Too bad we can't interview the drivers themselves, who now play harps and ride little white clouds. We also have the highest number of road deaths in the world. The good news is that we are not on the top ten list of worst road disasters worldwide, although every one of them involved a truck of some kind.