‘Sharing Road With Truckers’

While I tend to agree that everything from the general public’s poor driving habits to the deregulation of the trucking industry has led to the skyrocketing increase in truck-related accidents, your article concerning this ever-mounting problem didn’t deal with another negative that faces the people who commute daily in their well-built, well-maintained and well-driven passenger cars.

By that I mean the trucking industry apparently doesn’t give a hot damn about anything except what’s good for it. That’s why truckers continue to go about their business while spilling countless gallons of toxic chemicals, crude oil or highly inflammable materials all over our freeways. Yet these very same truckers have habitually shirked their responsibilities to the general public by not installing neoprene bladders or inner-liners inside the containers of their tank trucks to help render them puncture-proof.

And to add further insult to injury, our local trucking industry is currently in Sacramento lobbying against a measure that would mandate by law the covering of any load of sand, gravel and dirt. The truckers claim that such a law would be too costly for them to comply with. Never mind that these spills produce cracked windshields or ruin expensive paint jobs of other automobiles.

So until the trucking industry gets off its duff and begins to think about the poor commuters driving their endangered passenger cars, we can all figure that our daily trip to Los Angeles will be one of intimidation caused by dodging wayward rocks while steering around ugly pools of crude contaminates.

GRAY BASKERVILLE

Los Angeles