THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601200001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Big trucks on the main roads especially chock-a-block parades of the semis - account for many of the vicissitudes of ordinary drivers along those same thoroughfares, as many of us know and grumble about from time to time.
But big-rig problems vary in seriousness, and obviously the most serious ought to get the most attention. One serious problem in point is the simple matter of obstructed vision. I've gotten in a few licks on this before, but a few more wouldn't be amiss. The high-speed obstructions are as hazardous as ever, even worse, judging from some of my own recent ventures into the long-distance maelstrom.
For one thing, the person behind a wheel instinctively knows - just as they teach in driving courses - that being able to see way down the road ahead is a contributor to safety and confidence. The farther, the better, day or night. And most of us know the uneasy frustration of seeing nothing just ahead but the towering bulk of a truck-trailer, with all the rest of the traffic on beyond just a question mark. We must get around the thing, and too often we take more chances than we should to do just that.
This perilous frustration continues to grow.
But where lost visibility still contributes most unrelentingly to travel trauma - and to a more maddening degree than ever - is in the blotting-out of vital highway signs and instructions.
On a recent pass through the southern outskirts of Chicago, my wife and I found the heavy haulers in even tighter formation than in the nightmare of a few years ago, when we nearly got clobbered because we couldn't see our crucial exit sign till too late. This time, we had a safer passage only because we made our turn north way past the logical but deadly fork.
The phenomenon of virtually nonexistent signs on truck-clotted highways is an inevitable product of truck size and sign placement. I suppose those looking for solutions (if anybody is) should look at both parts of that equation.
I've tried thinking along those lines. And my speculation sure doesn't get very far when it comes to some modifying step in the case of the monster vehicles themselves. For one thing, the shift to mass movement of cargo over highways and away from railroads, however unwise, has gone too far for much reversing, and those trucks do bring us lots of good things.
It also seems futile, money-wise and otherwise, to propose some kind to dual road system to put the big rigs on a track where they don't block ordinary drivers' line of sight.
Can't make the titans transparent either (which suggests how wild the ideas can get if you puzzle over this long enough).
So how about those signs? Could they be moved to positions much higher above the road or - in the case of roadside versions - much farther to the left and right? And give motorists in any size vehicle a clear visual shot? Well, again not much realistic hope. The cost would be in the megazillions.
In fact, since the problem looks pretty well insoluble in pragmatic terms, I guess wild ideas are getting to be as good as any.
So how about a different tack altogether - a new accessory for the noncommercial car? Stealing an idea from undersea warfare (or from resourceful short people caught in mobs along parade routes or at race tracks)?
Then, when trucks obstruct:
Up periscopes! MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB