Duel

Sometimes driving to work feels like being in Spielberg's 1971 film "Duel". You know the one... where a car driver gets chased by a psychopathic truck. "A duel is about to begin between a man, a truck, and an open road. Where a simple battle of wits is now a matter of life and death."
I have been driving along the same road for the last 15 years to get to school and during this time the quantity of trucks has quadrupled. Last Thursday while driving along, there were so many trucks in the right lane that it was like driving beside a train. They were nose to tail for kilometres. Rather intimidating. Of course all these trucks slowed the traffic down to a crawl since all the cars squeezed into one lane. (A person would have be be completely deranged to want to drive encircled by these mastodons.) To make matters worse from time to time one of then would pull into the left lane and slowwww down traffic even more. (Who's going to argue with a giant 18 wheeler truck when it butts in front of you, forcing you to put on the brakes and slew to keep from hitting him.)
All the pundits tell us that trucks are needed for the economy and that business can't get along without them. Maybe that's true but maybe we should also look at the cost of having so many trucks on the road. The philosophy of "just-in-time" inventory and rapid delivery might be nice for business but I'm not so sure that it's good for the rest of us.

• Trucks pollute. One truck puts out about as much pollution as 150 cars and they are not even held to the same standards as cars. Most big trucks do not even have antipollution devices not being obligated by law. A train pulling the equivalent of 280 trucks of freight produces the equivalent of 30 trucks of pollution. (Could be a lot less if we electrified the railroads like the European rail system. We have much cheaper and cleaner electricity here than them. I'm sure we could come up with a hybrid system for when electrification is impossible.)
• Trucks usually cause traffic congestion at the peak traffic hours. Though I have no statistics, empirically from my observation, the days when traffic is the slowest are invariably the days when there is the most truck traffic. All that stalled traffic is not very good for air pollution.
  
• I was once told by an engineer who had worked in Transport Québec that a truck had a negative impact on roads equivalent to 10,000 cars. Everyone has seen and driven in the runnels carved into the road by truck wheels. They were certainly not made by cars since they are wider than any car width. For example, the Champlain Bridge in Montreal underwent major repairs a few years ago and these repairs were supposed to last 50 years. It has now been ascertained that they'll barely last 15 years because of all the heavy weight truck traffic.
• Compared to the wear and tear that trucks cause to the roads, they do not pay even a fraction of the the costs. Yes, they pay the same fuel taxes, license fees as car drivers but a car does not put the wear and tear on our road system that a truck does.
  
• Supposedly trucks are more economical than trains. Of course they are, they don't have to pay for the upkeep of the roads, like the railroads do. Make them pay the real price for their usage and wear on the roads and they would probably be much more expensive than the railroads.
• How many times have you seen accidents involving cars and truck. I know truck advocates say that car drivers are dangerous and cut in front of trucks. This is probably true but that does not cover all accidents. Where I live there was a major accident when an eighteen wheeler ploughed into stopped cars at a red light. The driver had been asleep. People died. In another accident on Highway 40 in the east end of Montreal, a tanker trailer truck again ploughed into stopped traffic on the highway killing many people. I've seen trucks pulling out onto a boulevard, turning left, crossing the boulevard and blocking it from side to side in the face of oncoming traffic. This was in the middle of winter, during a snow storm in icy conditions. I've seen trucks turned over in curves, trucks dropping their loads in the middle of the road, trucks losing control on the highway and wiping out a couple of cars on the way. When you are in a car, what chance do you have against them? I sometimes feel that certain truck drivers know this and use it to drive with impunity.
• Another problem is that many trucks should not even be on the road, bald tires, brakes shot, lights out etc.. (To be fair there are also many cars that shouldn't be on the roads either. Maybe we should have MOT inspections every year like in the UK. Cars and trucks that don't pass get their licence plates removed until repaired.) Every year in the spring the transport inspectors stop trucks but there are too many trucks and not enough inspectors, so many get away with it.
• There is also the fact that trucks are getting bigger and bigger all the time. The standard size is now a 53' trailer, whereas a few years ago they were much smaller. There are also more and more "train routier" road trains as we call them here. You know the trucks pulling two 53' trailers (That must come out to 120' of rig counting the truck itself.) Not light loads either, I've seen them pulling two flatbeds full of logs. No matter what they tell me, I'll never believe that they have full control of their rigs. If an emergency happens they'll never be able to control the load.
  

What would I do if I had the power? Well first of all I'd pass a law saying that trucks may only be used to deliver freight within 100 kilometres. Anything outside of that radius must be carried by freight train. There are now special freight cars where the truck drives up unto the freight car and leaves the trailer which is then carried to destination. Once arrived, it is then delivered to its final destination by another truck. Money must be spent to electrify the railroad grid to make it even less polluting.
I would have hours of exclusion, morning and night, where trucks are not allowed on the roads around a city, to help with traffic congestion.
Trucks have to be smaller and carry a lighter load to help with road deterioration and I would ban "train routier" and oversize loads.
There would be new much higher licensing fees to make trucks pay their fair share of the road usage and there must be yearly inspections for all vehicles.
OK I'm drastic, but I'm also tired of feeling that I am driving the highways and roads on sufferance. So there is my rant for the month.