This time of year, it's long been something of a clarion call among truckers to their fellow drivers to work together to help prevent the kinds of pileups seen in recent weeks for instance on I-35W in Fort Worth, Texas; in Iowa on I-80; and elsewhere. While truckers can't control the behavior of the four-wheelers around them, plenty drivers note, better hive-mind situational awareness could play a big part in reducing the severity of wrecks. That awareness is often based on timely info sharing obtained via one particularly hyper-local communication tool most have on board the truck.
Yes, we're talking the citizen's band radio here. In today's special-edition Overdrive Radio podcast, put together as part of Overdrive's 60th-anniversary installments every Monday, listen back to a round in our Audio Mailbag series that followed a deadly night on Eastbound I-80 in Pennsylvania in January 2017, when westbound trucker Scott Levan used his CB to warn EB drivers of traffic slowing near a broken-down semi on the shoulder.
"“I was yelling on the radio … just before it took place telling you all to spread out because you have a broken-down semi on the shoulder and traffic is coming to a stop,” LeVan wrote in something of a message to his fellow drivers at the time. His CB warning got nary a response in the moment as he passed by. “Get with the program, drivers. There is no excuse for you not to have a CB.”
According to recent polling of Overdrive readers, though, just 8 percent of the readership runs entirely without a CB in the truck. Another 10% say they hardly ever use the one they have. Most reported daily CB use for a variety of purposes.
Among the
