DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour       

Have you ever been driving down the road, singing to yourself, “Doot doot do doot doot doot…life been good to me” when all of a sudden…crash…your windshield resembles an earthquake from those old dinosaur movies where the ground splits in two and animals and humans fall into the abyss? Chances are you’re driving in close proximity to a gravel-hauling truck. If your luck is as good as mine it’s a double-trailer gravel hauler.
 
Before I start off on my tangent I want all you drivers of gravel haulers to know this diatribe is not directed at you. You’re trying to make a living like anybody else…even if I sometimes wonder if the glass replacement industry doesn’t sponsor a scholarship program for those truckers who can prove they’ve been responsible for the most destroyed windshields.

You’ll find some who say, “Oh…I guess broken windshields are the price we have to pay for progress. It’s a cost of doing business where driving is concerned.” Pussies who think like that should find the tire treads of a twin-screw Freightliner rolling over their faces! People who think like that probably condoned running the Indians off their land because someday they’d probably be in the way of a freeway…whatever that meant back then.

There supposedly are “safeguards” that are said to almost entirely eliminate rocks falling out the back of trailer doors and some even have a mosquito netting-type contraption that’s supposed to block gravel and other truck-borne ammunition from flying out the top. Theoretically, I agree with Martha Stewart…"It’s a good thing." However, in practice it’s not the great panacea it’s supposed to be. When following a gravel hauler in heavy traffic, one can actually get motion sickness from weaving back and forth to avoid falling and bouncing gravel.

As if to make the joy complete, rocks that are stuck into the tread of tires that are picked up at construction sites remind me of some of those card sharks from the cowboy movies who sneakily pull a derringer out of their sleeve and put a tunnel in the head of an opponent.
 
There are few sounds more sickening than the noise of a rock hitting your windshield or some other part of your vehicle. A few that come to mind are the sound of a tooth cracking as an oral surgeon is pulling it; the awful zzzzzz of a dentist’s drill as he prepares to find every exposed nerve in your jaw; and any song that’s sung by Anita Baker. You know there’s damage to that window…it’s just a question of exactly where. Generally a quick scan will turn up no damage. But rest assured, Bubbles…it’s there.

What’s really depressing, yet as fascinating as watching a train wreck, is seeing a crack slowly ooze across your windshield like lava pouring from Mt. Kilauea. Just like a pot of gold is alluded to be at the end of a rainbow, so is the phone number of a windshield replacement firm at the end of your cracked window.

As long as there’s not a thing you can do about it we should at least have some chuckles and guffaws. For every windshield that’s broken as a result of debris from his truck a driver should be awarded a little window decal to put on the driver’s-side door like those fighter planes that used to sport German or Japanese flag symbols. As with their airborne brothers, for every five windshields the driver is responsible for (with the necessary confirmation either from a fellow driver or a “trailer camera”) the driver becomes an ace.

The leading American ace of all time is Major Richard I. Bong, who had 40 kills. A twin-trailer, gravel-hauling truck driver with a route over some rough highways could outscore Major Bong in one summer’s construction season. At least most of us have a windshield as our last line of defense. What do motorcyclists do? As if we all don’t already have enough to worry about.
 
I wonder if this same scenario manifested itself as wagon trains headed west in the 1800s? Were horses and cows hit in the eyes from rocks kicked up from the wooden wheels? Probably so, but at least they didn’t have to worry about cracked windshields, which seems to be the true mark of progress. Maybe we wouldn’t have an economic crisis in this country if only we’d invested in windshield-futures years ago.