This Dodge Sprinter is my ride this week. Too bad there aren't any mountain roads where I could take it out and carve some corners.
What I do have around me are a couple of highways, and that's how I got this tiny creature home yesterday. If you ever had faith in most of your fellow drivers, pilot something like this for a while and then get back to me.
You'll notice that there are no side windows. That didn't stop a dozen drivers from sticking beside me with their front wheels pretty much even with my rear ones, for several kilometres at a stretch.
The brakes are good, but this is still a lot of truck to stop. I stayed in the right-hand lane (which is generally the empty one, since few people have any clue where they're supposed to drive), but even that wasn't enough for a couple of people who had to cut me off, pulling in front of me with a car length to spare, because they'd been over in the left lane and now had to get over to their exit ramps.
And you'd think something this big would be easy to spot, but no, I had to try out the horn on one cell-phone gabber who started to drift into my lane. Honey, if I can keep this thing steady between the white lines on a very windy day, surely to heaven you can do the same in a Cavalier.
I know not every tractor-trailer driver is a saint, but whenever I hear about a collision involving a big rig, my first thought is always: what stunt did the driver in the car pull?
I'd love to see all passenger-car drivers required to take a big, windowless van like this out on the highway for a couple of hours and see exactly what it's like, and then maybe they'd learn. Too many people are absolutely clueless when it comes to sharing the road with tractor-trailers. If you're not willing or able to drive properly around the trucks, stay the hell off the highway. Period.
