d4c24a:
what like America
Actually yes. I’m in America about 90% of the time and violence towards truck drivers and theft of loads or drivers cabs is almost unheared of because so many American drivers do carry hand guns and will use them to defend themselves and for this reason people dont mess with truckers. Even car drivers very rarely give rude hand signals to truck drivers because they know they could be carrying a gun and the truck quite likely isn’t limited. America is always thought to be a highly dangerous place, and in places such as Atlanta and Detroit (I’ve been to both this week) it certainly is but outside of the very isolated and well known dangerous cities, its far safer to be a truck driver in America than in the UK.
Now I dont wish to see the UK turn in to a arms ridden society but normal decent people do need to be able to protect themselves legally without fear of prosecution. Being a victim of violent crime in the UK seems a bit like being tried as a witch in the 1600s in the ducking stool. If you drown you are innocent and if you live you are guilty and excecuted. Likewise if you defend yourself and return violence to those who bring aggression to you, you’ll be prosecuted, and if you just sit there like a good little law abiding Britisher and suffer serious injury or even death then thats just too bad and the police will issue a statement that they’re looking for the offenders, long after they’ve beaten you up, maybe killed you and departed the scene.
In America, if you park your truck in a well known gangster riddled town, you might get targetted in the dead of night by the local home boys but thats about it and knowing that you’d never park there anyway, but in one of the thousands of free truckstops with proper facilities, you certainly wont get dragged out of your cab on a rural road in Pennsylvania or Utah and you’ll never, ever have your diesel stolen from your totally unsecured diesel tanks. In Britain every jumped up car driver who cuts you up thinks he can have a go at you and prove his manhood by jumping out of his car with a baseball bat, every gypsie campsite thinks it has a god given right to steal your diesel or ■■■■■ your curtains and take your load and you cant do anything about it.
