Four-wheeler scare-quotes ‘professional’

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Updated Oct 9, 2012

A four-wheeler letter writer to the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune’s “Ask a Trooper” column, and I quote:

It seems to me that too many “professional” drivers let the “power” sensation of operating such large, powerful vehicles overtake them so they go so heavy on the gas and crowd anyone who happens to be in front of them, but who has the same right to the road they do.

Now I might come to this with no shortage of bias, but the letter writer quoted here it seems to me could be suffering from tunnel vision, that common inability to see things from another’s perspective. The self-proclaimed 40,000-mile-plus yearly auto driver contends there’s a veritable epidemic of big-truck speeding and aggressive driving on the nation’s highways that he then asks the Tribune’s contributing trooper to confirm.

Perhaps most unfortunately, the trooper does little to argue with the contention. “I think we are pulling them over, but perhaps not enough,” he starts his response, then to his credit goes on to plead for a little four-wheeler / police / professional driver togetherness on safety issues. Falls a little flat, in the end, however.

What do you think? Big foul? Or just more evidence of prevailing attitudes in the negative for the American trucker?

Find the full exchange on the News Tribune site here.

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