Trucker’s Report: It seems like every week or so, you hear about another driver who hits an overpass or destroys a bridge and then blames it on his GPS for sending him on that route. That excuse is bad enough when it’s a matter of clearances or weight, but what about when the road the trucker blames the GPS for taking him on isn’t even a road?
A patrol officer in Atlantic City was driving near the boardwalk at around 5:30am when he saw a truck parked nearby with its flashers on. According to the Ventnor Police Chief, Douglas Biagi, the officer thought it might be part of the Army Corps of Engineers dune-building projects. But when he got closer he saw that it was a tractor trailer sitting where no tractor trailer should be sitting – on a wooden pedestrian boardwalk. read more
The driver will be OK. He’ll just go over to JB Hunt.
So what was the driver’s name? Mohammed?
Modern excuses:
GPS mistake
My Twitter was hacked
Oppressed
Guns
Whitey
To be fair, the driver probably comes from a place where “roads” look like animal paths. He probably doesn’t know what they do and don’t look like in the civilized world.
RosalindJ
Those J B Hunt drivers catch hell. Used to be Roadway drivers.
I’ve seen GPS want you to drive through a lake to get to your destination. One always need to be critical of where the GPS wants you to go.
Because the boardwalk is not a roadway the driver will not be ticketed. WTF? So a drunk can drive thru my front yard, but because my yard is not a roadway there is no infraction?
A couple of weeks ago mine decided to take a wild hike and told me I was headed North and ramping up speed when I was actually traveling West at about 35MPH. By the time it was showing me well over Lake Erie I was traveling 180MPH and climbing! It was rather amusing since I had never seen it do that, but a re-boot solved the problem.
Mayhem: “…Recalculating…”
One word – Mapquest
Well, in the road industry, CRST stands for Can’t Remember $hit Today. There you go.
I’ve backed semis up more miles drunk than most have gone forward sober, so I feel fairly confident when I say that there are some of the dumbest motherfuckers in the world behind the wheel of those trucks.
CRST? Hmmmm, I think maybe someone is messing with them… or maybe their hiring and training practices have finally caught up with them?
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46059128&nid=148&title=butterfield-canyon-road-reopens-after-semi-crash
Are these some of the same dumb eastern European drivers who were driving a large Safeway truck over Lookout Pas from Montana into Idaho driving in the left lane without chains in a snow storm who lost traction and jackknifed less than a half mile from the top of the pass a few winters and caused everyone including me to come to a complete standstill and have to chain up to get over the last half mile over the pass. There were a lot of pissed drivers that night because these dumbasses didn’t chain up.
Lay off. CAR DRIVERS ARE A 1000 times worse. Truck driving can be a bitch. Stupid road signs, stupid dispatchers, demanding companies, cops with quotas, assholes at warehouses, more laws and regulations than are necessary and just daily bullshit. Go ahead smart guy, try it. No you’ll just say something childishly clever like “oh, he’s butthurt.”
@ cfm990, Didn’t know about the Roadway bit. They (IME) were pretty good, especially driving doubles. I do know JB, due to their insurance rating, had their trucks limited to 55mph until around ’05.
@ Handy N Hansom, yup. Except the ratio of dumb mfr truckdrivers is slightly lower than that of internet commenters, if you catch my drift.
@ a non a moose. TU. If I could tu you more than once, I would.
RUSSIANS!
Funny, but I have found myself on a dirt road or two that the GPS routes me on only to find myself about to drive down a foot trail at some point.
Freaking hilarious, TomTom.
It does a decent job of replacing my Mapsco for locating an address, but I often take the better route and let it correct itself as I go. 40+ years of driving around Dallas has me be familiar with the main roads.
Not so if I’ve never been to an area before. I sometimes find I’m told to take an exit or road that just doesn’t exist. Had to make 3 passes at an intersection way out NW of Ft Worth for #2 son’s wedding because it said to exit when you couldn’t and didn’t show the roads right in the opposite direction. Turned out, everyone else had the same problem.
Try not to depend too much on “systems” for your safety and well being. Glitches happen all the time.
Once had an owner, heavy on the Indian accent(call center type, not bow type) call from SoCal to say a driver that neither spoke nor understood English, would be in for a belt idler. Tell me, if one does not comprehend the language, how are they safe drivers, car or semi?
Several years ago, my roommate and I were driving through Canyonlands National Park and decided to follow a route listed on one of the park maps. It was not a large road, but was paved and even had a center line painted on it.
GPS was having a fit – it showed we were driving through and up and down the canyons! It kept trying to get us to turn around.
At least we wern’t traveling 185MPH up a hill on Lake Erie (Rat Fink, you made me laugh out loud)!!
does he habla engliz?
“…on the boardwalk, down by the sea…”
Trucker was Antonio Menjivar of Dallas Texas. A nice Irish boy…
I know that area well. Maybe was looking to park his truck and go for a ride in one of those rattan strollers pushed by crackheads on the AC boardwalk?