Thursday, July 10, 2003
I'm reading the main page for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They have short summaries of the articles with links to the full articles. This was a summary for an article:
"Utah officials say the Bosnian-born truck driver charged with causing a crash on Monday afternoon that killed five people in Butler County passed written tests in English for a commercial driver’s license. Pennsylvania State Police say he speaks such poor English that they can’t communicate with him. "
This reminds me of a story that I still have somewhere from the Washington Observer-Reporter about a intersection in my home school district. I can't find the article online, but it had a big picture of a truck trying to make a really sharp turn in the middle of Bentleyville.
See Bentleyville has two exits off of Interstate 70. The east one has a big (and recently rebuilt) truck stop on it. The exit also has a hotel, a gas station, and a few fast food places just off of it. It also has roads designed to handle big trucks. There are no sharp turns and the roads are flat. If you get off of that exit and go past the truck stop and such, the road eventually becomes Main Street, Bentleyville.
The west exit actually comes out on a country road. If you're heading eastbound and get off of the first (the west) exit and make a left off of it, you only have back country roads for a while. If you make a right, you get about a mile of country road before you appear in Bentleyville. This road intersects Main Street at a very sharp angle, such that you have to make a extremely sharp left turn to head to the truck stop and the other exit of 70, but it's a very easy right to go into Bentleyville. If a truck gets off at the west exit, it either has to make that extremely sharp left turn or go into town, on the very un-wide Main Street that are not designed to handle big tractor trailers, and find somewhere to turn around.
Well, back to the Observer-Reporter article. It seemed that a tractor trailer trying to get to the truck stop got off on the wrong exit, despite all the signs that said "no truck" and "truck services use exit B" and such. There are a ton of signs saying for big trucks to go to the following exit. The picture shows the truck do damage to the land around the road while trying to make the left turn and it also shows a local policeman trying to help the truck drivers. Since the turn wasn't designed for big rigs, these turns turn into 100-point turns and the policeman was trying to say stuff like "back up", "stop, you're too close", etc. This was pointless as the truck driver didn't speak english. Of course he didn't. If he had been able to speak english, he would have gotten off at the right exit.
Last year, to avoid events like that happening, they spent over a million dollars to reconstruct that intersection to allow trucks to make that turn easier. Over a million dollars of tax payers money because there are some truckers can't speak english.
Now, as the construction were going on, the road had to be closed. They put up huge signs that said local traffic only. Truckers still went off of that exit. They put the signs so that only one car could fit down that road a time. The truckers still came, sometimes knocking over the big signs. When they got to the closed roads, they turned onto side residential streets which involve steep hills, sharper turns and low hanging tree branchs.
There were a ton of signs going eastbound saying that the truck stop was the second exit. It gives no advantage to the driver to get off on the wrong exit because it takes so much time to manuever through bentleyville rather than go the extra mile to the second exit so the only possible reason to get off on the wrong exit would be if they couldn't read the signs.
Now I'm not trying to say that people who don't speak english shouldn't make a living in the United States. I'm just saying you should know atleast enough English to do your job. If I moved to a non-english speakign country, I would probably have to do manual labor cause I don't know any other language. I would accept until I learned enough of the native language to do something else.
And I'm not saying that truck drivers are bad. Growing up near a truck stop, I've known a few families that made their living driving trucks.
The point of all this is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't drive for a living.
The next time you pass or get passed by a tractor-trailer on the highway, that truck driver might not have any commands of the English language. It's not that likely. Chances are he probably speaks better english than you or me, but the chances that he speaks no english at all seems more likely than anyone would hope. Maybe the best thing to come out of that fatal accident might be a fix to that bad intersection or maybe a crackdown on requirements that truck drivers have a working knowledge of English. All I know is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving. You definitely shouldn't be driving professionally.
"Utah officials say the Bosnian-born truck driver charged with causing a crash on Monday afternoon that killed five people in Butler County passed written tests in English for a commercial driver’s license. Pennsylvania State Police say he speaks such poor English that they can’t communicate with him. "
This reminds me of a story that I still have somewhere from the Washington Observer-Reporter about a intersection in my home school district. I can't find the article online, but it had a big picture of a truck trying to make a really sharp turn in the middle of Bentleyville.
See Bentleyville has two exits off of Interstate 70. The east one has a big (and recently rebuilt) truck stop on it. The exit also has a hotel, a gas station, and a few fast food places just off of it. It also has roads designed to handle big trucks. There are no sharp turns and the roads are flat. If you get off of that exit and go past the truck stop and such, the road eventually becomes Main Street, Bentleyville.
The west exit actually comes out on a country road. If you're heading eastbound and get off of the first (the west) exit and make a left off of it, you only have back country roads for a while. If you make a right, you get about a mile of country road before you appear in Bentleyville. This road intersects Main Street at a very sharp angle, such that you have to make a extremely sharp left turn to head to the truck stop and the other exit of 70, but it's a very easy right to go into Bentleyville. If a truck gets off at the west exit, it either has to make that extremely sharp left turn or go into town, on the very un-wide Main Street that are not designed to handle big tractor trailers, and find somewhere to turn around.
Well, back to the Observer-Reporter article. It seemed that a tractor trailer trying to get to the truck stop got off on the wrong exit, despite all the signs that said "no truck" and "truck services use exit B" and such. There are a ton of signs saying for big trucks to go to the following exit. The picture shows the truck do damage to the land around the road while trying to make the left turn and it also shows a local policeman trying to help the truck drivers. Since the turn wasn't designed for big rigs, these turns turn into 100-point turns and the policeman was trying to say stuff like "back up", "stop, you're too close", etc. This was pointless as the truck driver didn't speak english. Of course he didn't. If he had been able to speak english, he would have gotten off at the right exit.
Last year, to avoid events like that happening, they spent over a million dollars to reconstruct that intersection to allow trucks to make that turn easier. Over a million dollars of tax payers money because there are some truckers can't speak english.
Now, as the construction were going on, the road had to be closed. They put up huge signs that said local traffic only. Truckers still went off of that exit. They put the signs so that only one car could fit down that road a time. The truckers still came, sometimes knocking over the big signs. When they got to the closed roads, they turned onto side residential streets which involve steep hills, sharper turns and low hanging tree branchs.
There were a ton of signs going eastbound saying that the truck stop was the second exit. It gives no advantage to the driver to get off on the wrong exit because it takes so much time to manuever through bentleyville rather than go the extra mile to the second exit so the only possible reason to get off on the wrong exit would be if they couldn't read the signs.
Now I'm not trying to say that people who don't speak english shouldn't make a living in the United States. I'm just saying you should know atleast enough English to do your job. If I moved to a non-english speakign country, I would probably have to do manual labor cause I don't know any other language. I would accept until I learned enough of the native language to do something else.
And I'm not saying that truck drivers are bad. Growing up near a truck stop, I've known a few families that made their living driving trucks.
The point of all this is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't drive for a living.
The next time you pass or get passed by a tractor-trailer on the highway, that truck driver might not have any commands of the English language. It's not that likely. Chances are he probably speaks better english than you or me, but the chances that he speaks no english at all seems more likely than anyone would hope. Maybe the best thing to come out of that fatal accident might be a fix to that bad intersection or maybe a crackdown on requirements that truck drivers have a working knowledge of English. All I know is, if you can't read road signs, you shouldn't be driving. You definitely shouldn't be driving professionally.
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