Showing posts with label pick up trucks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pick up trucks. Show all posts

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Trash on the Highway

This is not the title of a country song, but something I get mad about because of the danger, as well as the fact that it’s littering. Hauling your stuff in an open truck bed is not legal. I have spent thousands of dollars repairing my car because I’ve hit pieces of a wooden pallet and a blown semi truck tire on the interstate. I drive defensively looking ahead in the road for pieces of furniture dumped out of open bed trucks. I’ve had a dresser drawer slide out of a truck in front of my car. Fortunately I was able to move into the left lane and avoid it. One morning, I was driving out of town very early, and a hardback book hit the driver’s side of my windshield. It wasn’t War and Peace, but made a SMACK on the windshield and frightened me.

A horrible accident happened on the interstate a few years back when mattresses fell out of a pick up truck and killed several people in a car hit by them. The state of Tennessee has litter laws that outlaw open bed hauling, but folks continue to move their stuff in pick up trucks.

I once spotted a destroyed mattress on the side of the interstate, after someone hit it. The insides of the mattress was blown everywhere. I've seen chairs on the side of the interstate, and I know that these toppled out of trucks. I once saw a semi trucker run over a plastic play gym as it fell out of an open truck in front of him. No, the play gym didn’t survive.