'It's scary' what a semi truck passenger sees out her window driving through BC
Christine Aiken spent the past year riding along in her husband’s semi truck, driving around BC and putting in thousands of kilometres every week.
Perched high on the passenger seat, Aiken has a unique perspective on other drivers sharing the road.
“You see a lot and you see bad accidents with vehicles and semis,” she said. “And it's sad, you see lives lost.”
Aiken recently moved to the Lower Mainland for her husband’s work, but spends half her time in Vernon where her doctor and close community connections remain. She travels between the Lower Mainland and Vernon regularly in a passenger vehicle.
Having grown up in a family of truckers, the trucking industry isn’t new to Aiken, but she said the amount of erratic behaviour, distracted driving and excessive speeding is worse than ever before, and she’s witnessing close calls and accidents on a daily basis.
“We have regular vehicles passing us on blind corners, following too close behind us, or passing us only to immediately slow down,” she said. “Everybody has got such a fast pace... it’s like a total disregard for human life.
“People are excessively speeding way past the maximum speeds posted, it’s scary."
Peering down from her seat, Aiken can see into the windows of passing vehicles.
“I see people that have their phone in the middle of the steering wheel and they’re texting as they’re driving, they’re so distracted,” she said. “We were driving down the road and I looked over at this guy in the other lane and he’s actually looking in the opposite direction. He had an iPad perched up there and he’s watching a program.
“Maybe you don’t care if you go home to your family, but I sure want to go home to mine.”
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Because of the size and heavy weight of semi trucks, the drivers are limited when it comes to stopping and turning, and can’t necessarily react quickly to avoid collisions with unsafe drivers. They need to gain speed when approaching a hill and need lots of room to make wide turns.
“People don’t understand, these trucks don’t stop on a dime,” Aiken said. “If he has to hit his brakes and you’re riding his ass you’re underneath him and there’s nothing he can do to protect you.
“When I grew up, I was taught if you have a truck behind you and he wants to go by, as soon as you find a spot where you can let him go, let him go. He’s making a living and has deadlines to meet.”
In the Southern Interior, the number of crashes and injured victims in crashes where at least one commercial truck was involved has remained fairly consistent over the past five years, with a yearly average of 2004 incidents that resulted in 407 injuries, according to ICBC statistics.
Between 2018 and 2023, the number of fatalities involving commercial vehicles slowly increased in the region with an average of 30 per year.
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Aiken said while there are bad semi truck operators, in her experience the majority are doing a safe job.
“I see people trying to blame truckers for accidents but I’d say 95 per cent out there want to do a good job,” she said. “They don’t want to be labelled a bad driver, they don’t want to cause that carnage. They want to get their load to where its going in a timely and safe fashion. They’re not out there trying to make our life as regular drivers difficult.”
Aiken admitted she has seen her share of dangerous driving by truckers and there are errors on both sides.
“It’s hard because with these new electronic logs they’ve only got so many working hours, they can’t necessarily stop and park and have their rest periods, they have to run the clock," she said. “I know companies are trying to make profits too but somewhere in there we have to start appreciating the pressure the drivers are under and give them more of a grace time.”
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Aiken said more training at the high school level on sharing the road with semi trucks could be beneficial, along with regulations to govern the top speeds of vehicles, and having phones disabled once a car starts moving.
“There are so many people that don’t even understand the basics of driving. People don’t know how to change their oil or how to change a tire yet they can get into these vehicles that are like lethal weapons.”
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A collision killed four people in the Kootenays this summer when a passenger truck crashed into a semi truck. In this incident the passenger truck crossed the centre line and the semi attempted to avoid a collision but couldn’t due to carrying 100,000 lb. of timber.
In an incident in the Shuswap in spring, two semi trucks collided when one trucker heading east failed to make a right-hand turn and flipped the truck and trailer on its side in the oncoming traffic lane.
The driver of a semi truck heading west was unable to stop in time and hit the rig.
The driver and passenger in the flipped truck were killed, while the other driver suffered minor injuries.
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At the beginning of the year a Clearwater resident shared her concerns over the safety of the Yellowhead Highway north of Kamloops shortly after her son was rear-ended by a semi while parked on the side of the highway and had to be extricated by emergency crews.
On Dec. 28, 2023 on the same highway near Barrier, three people were killed when a southbound Toyota Corolla attempted to pass a semi truck and trailer and collided head-on with an oncoming Ford Sprinter van.
With winter approaching and treacherous conditions on the highways, especially mountain passes, Aiken wants drivers to leave to their destinations earlier, slow down and plan ahead so all drivers can get home safely.
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