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As a group truckers represent a significant population of road users whose high exposure driving creates a major challenge for safety. The book chronicles the life and times of truckers as they try to make ends meet. With a set of broad lenses driver the book analyzes driver risk by exploring the reasons for it, reactions to it and the consequences of it
This is a book about truck drivers' lives, risks and views on making a living and safety. As a group truckers represent a significant population of road users whose high expplosure driving creates a major challenge for safety. Research into the larger social political and economic forces that affect truckerks? safety problems has been scarce.
The research question is: Why is the average trucker continuously placed in conditions that, according to truckers, demand risky driving? As a result of direct experience in trucks and with trucks, Rothe observes that truck drivers act as they do to gain autonomy over their work, freedome from control of others, and assurance of a reasonable livelihood. In order to maintain a sufficient income in the transportation market, even the most serioius drivers perform tasks that often impinge on lethality and safety, not as blatant radicals or daredevils fighting the system, but as persons responding to the fear tha they lose their livelihood in trucking.
Rothe spend considerable time driving with different truckers all over North America. The differnt type/kinds of truckers were described in the book. The chapters are:
Crossing the Canada-United States Border, The culture of Communication, Driving by the Light of the Moon, Owner Operators vs Company Drivers, Dispatchers and Bennies, Three Beers for the Road, Husband and Wife Teams for Love and Safety, Smokies Stopping Truckers, Giddyup Quick Freight and the Courier Team, On FAmily, Giving Motorists a Brake, Thirty Hours on the Road, No Big Deal, No Time for Crashes, A Look BAck and Ahead
Excerpt
Screwing regulations means cutting corners in vehicle maintenance, disobeying traffic laws, shirking general safe driving behaviors and taking illicit drugs. Although truckers routinely break laws and regulation, the drivers do not believe that these actions make them unsafe drivers. They believe that their superior operating skills, extensive trucking experience and quick reflexes compensate for breaking laws which many truckers write off as being punitive anyway.
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