The Real World...

I have left a job over safety
I was fired from a job over safety

On this day I picked up trailer the company has had issues with for the last 2 months and after the initial pretrip seems to show it was fine, 20 miles down the road, the ABS light on the trailer came on. Knowing I was to be heading over a training weigh station this day, I stopped and called my boss and let her know what was up. It was agreed that I could disable the ABS warning light, deliver, hope for the best and get the trailer repaired later. What happens when the ABS fails the brakes default to the good old standard manual brakes so you pump them to stop quickly instead of slamming them on in an emergency. The photo is the wiring harness I cut off and the repair tag I put on the trailer. 

Everything was fine until I went across that scale. My trainer in 1994 taught me that you are always 100% honest with the police but you don't need to tell them every detail if they don't ask. It's a fine line I know but... So before the inspection started, I told the officer all the issues with the trailer that I had known about over the last 2 months. (basically admitted guilt to pulling a defective but safe trailer) He then proceed to take my drivers license and.. In all the years I have been driving, I never had an officer test to see if the sprayer on the windshield wipers worked or not and..  

After the officer was nearly done, he informed me he needed to get his supervisors approval on the brake / ABS issue. He spent quite some time under the trailer but came back and said the brake was "technically legal" and the issue was the truck wasn't sending a signal to the ABS system on the trailer to work. Because I was upfront with them on the known issue, because I was planning to put the equipment out of service when unloaded, because I knew the trailer was safe to be on the road, and most importantly of all, they found ZERO other violations on my paperwork or the equipment, I was told to get it fixed ASAP and that I would not be receiving a citation. 

I wrote those first two sentences because reality and the real world don't always go together. Food needs to be put on the table, rent needs to be paid, kids may be in college or there is an overdue medical bill needing to be paid.. The company I left required drivers to go to a place of repair unless the equipment wasn't movable - didn't matter if it wasn't safe to do so. The other company I was fired at was because so much of their equipment wasn't safe to be on the road that I was always in the repair shop and thus, I was an "unproductive driver". The company I am with now tries to strike a balance between the two.

It shouldn't have to be this way but it is... So next time your traveling down the road and there is a semi next to you, please stay 300 yards / 274 meters behind it so the driver can see you, don't hang out anywhere near the truck / trailer as the laws of physics go against you if something goes wrong - just pass and go on..