All over the country truckers are fighting against idling restrictions. From California all the way to Madison, WI and beyond county boards are meeting to put in idling restrictions. Some counties already have them in place where truckers can only idle their trucks for five minutes for every hour. There is one exception if the temperature is below 40 or above 80 degrees then they can idle it for 20 minutes. Even for truckers that have invested in to 12 volt products like a heated electric blanket this can still cause problems. I know my father was a trucker all his life.
What the environmentalists don’t realize is that
truckers are trying to sleep so they don’t drive tired. There’s a group formed named P.A.T.T. (Parents against Tired Truckers) that was created just for parents who were afraid of tired truckers. The problem is how are they supposed to wake up every hour to run their trucks for 20 minutes? Even if they were able to and still get a good night’s rest when its negative 20 degrees outside it takes around 15 minutes just for any vehicle to get heated up anyway. Even with all of the 12 volt products in the world, truckers still need their trucks running to stay warm.
The cities that are considering imposing these idling restrictions need to think of the real life consequences they are forcing on the truckers. They need to imagine sleeping in their house for 8 hours with no heat or told they can only turn it on for 20 minutes and then think about what they are forcing on thousands of people trying to sleep so they can do their jobs without hurting or killing anyone. |
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