So I doubt anyone will notice this with currently 109 comments on the board, but I’m a trucker in this area and this scares me. This scares me a lot. I’m often trying to maneuver in places like Harvard Square, at night, in bad weather, with a smaller but still very hazardous trailer swinging around behind me, and I’ve stopped at the Newton Plaza a number of times on my way out just to calm my nerves. Just like the rig leaving the scene without any awareness of the accident, I shiver to think of how my trailer might have clipped someone in these tight spaces and I’d never notice.

I also have to say, and brace myself for the hate, that I’ve had to save a lot of people from themselves on a daily basis. We added more mirrors to our trucks than DOT requires, to improve our blindspot and cornering visibility, and I try to be hypervigilant with noticing, tracking, and accommodating bikers who might come up on my right side just as I begin to make a right turn, even just the right curve in Harvard Square heading southwest from Church St. In places where bikes share travel lanes with us, they often try to overtake us on the right, between parked cars, especially when we’re stopped, and on some turns, the space between parked cars and trailers gets real small real fast. It’s a fact that some people don’t seem to respect, and that scares me, and it should scare them.

I hear that this video lays the blame on the truck, and tragedies are awful, no matter who is at fault, and in a lot of ways, it’s not fair that this mixing of bicycles and heavyweight freight happens on our already too small street. But I think that there’s a strong lesson to be learned that it is always better to be safe and be cautious than make a guess or try to rush. I don’t want to kill anyone, and I’ll always do my part to express caution (and thankfully am familiar enough with the bad choke points and bike-lane crosses to know when to slow way down).

PS. To anyone who insists on zipping speedily around in the cities, and gets mad at me for doing a pondering 20mph, this is why. In 5 years of driving downtown, the number of pedestrians and bicycles that have almost died in front of or beside my truck is staggering, so I’m going to take my time, because I never want to be this dude.

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