Has Anybody Here Had A Serious Medical Emergency While Driving?

You know what...I'm done now too.

I've been very nice to you and tried to help, but yet again you just made ANOTHER sexist remark...first about women being weak and now about us not being decisive. But you call US cyberbullies?

You are "recovering from a disability".... Which means you are still disabled. Do you know we have a member here who is going through hoops over a condition she had TWELVE years ago?????

T W E L V E. Years. So what makes you think you can just get approved and get a job.

Not to mention the fact that you are more interested in disability insurance and workman's comp than you ever were in anything we had to say about the trucking lifestyle.

Go ahead and stop at a truck stop. See what happens. Tell them everything. I'd love for you to record a video of it so I can see their faces.

And by the way, this weak indecisive woman can will be driving long long after you get rejected by your last company.

I'm done. Rant over.

If you feel this site is full of cyber bullying, I can't imagine you've ever been to any other site.

As for going down to the truck stop to get a 'real feel', good luck with that. You'll need it. The drivers sitting around in truck stops are great sources for what NOT to do by just doing the opposite of whatever they tell you, for the most part. Same with around terminals.

As for emergencies, not that you'll end up caring, but response times can be all over the place, even in rural areas. Before trucking I was on two different fire departments that responded to medical calls, both very rural. One ranked in the top 15% of fire departments, paid and volunteer, in the country for response times. The other varied from a couple minutes to nearly an hour, depending on the location and who was available to respond.

Complicating matters tremendously is that there are still a few places that don't have 911 service and instead have a regular phone number you call for emergencies. Not to mention the number of places that don't have cell service. In theory if you have a CB you can use channel 9, but it's quite likely no one is monitoring that channel. That's one of the reasons we get physicals and need to be completely honest during them.

I would never LIE during a physical. At least in the army, qualified medics were always in the field during maneuvers from anything to frostbite to heat exhaustion a soldier might experience. In many civilian trucking could even be MORE hazardous than military service during peace time.

I still believe I will be much more qualified when my weight gets below 200 pounds. If my BODY can handle the job, my MIND and SOUL can handle it.

Ally Knight stepped out of her truck wrong and broke her ankle or foot, can't remember exact. She was in the middle of nowhere and had to call 911. J Cannel broke his foot bad getting out of the truck wrong. Don't know how he got help. Everyone I know has a cell phone on them at all times. We have a panic button on our Peoplenet. People get hurt and killed every day. I once threw my back out standing still. The more we are aware of our surroundings and what we are doing the less chance we have of injuring ourselves.

Oscar, I was going to tell you a very dramatic and moving story about how I nearly died from heart problems while I was parked and waiting for a load. Then I thought, Wait a minute, Oscar's a year younger than me. I had open heart surgery and got back to work three times faster than he is planning to even make one real step toward actual work!

Quit sucking the government tit, dude, or at least quit wasting our time telling us how much you don't care, as if we owe it to you. We don't -- or at least, I don't.

And just for the sake of adding something salacious to increase the popularity of this final thread of yours, might I suggest that you ask the government to supply you with a suitable companion robot so that you can imagine what it might be like to be trained by an attractive trucker who finds you to be irresistible? Not that I want to hear any details as a result of that, but I'm thinking that might help keep you off the internet.

Does anybody here know anybody here who has had a heart attack or something bad while driving a commercial truck anywhere in North America and especially in a remote area?

I am just curious as to how any driver could summon emergency medical help and how long it might take to get a response in the most rural of places any driver might be in.

I know more than one driver has had serious medical issues on the job over the history of this industry. There was a story years ago about a driver who died from a bee sting because he was allergic to bee sting and a bee got into his cab and stung him on the job.

I am not allergic to bee sting myself but I have a history of heart palpitations, chest pains, faintness and shortness of breath. Last year I did drive my car 2,500 miles, a 1995 Toyota Corolla, with good working factory air, 100,000 original miles. This was in the summer around this time of year. I drove from California, through Oregon up to Washington back down through Idaho and across the HOT 105 degree Nevada desert in broad daylight and back home safe again unscathed even with two BAD tires with some degree of tread separation!!!!!!

In short, I am NOT the least bit scared to drive my little 22-year-old Toyota across the searing Nevada desert. I have a cell phone but it might not work out in those boonies.

Perhaps, Toyota Motor Company should build Class 7/8 trucks with their same level of "famous reliability" they have had in their smaller vehicles for many decades now! My father used to tell me about big diesel trucks like Peterbilt. He said those things never have to be "messed with" (mechanically speaking) for hundreds of thousands of miles. He implied big diesel rigs were built like army tanks and navy battleships and they really should be. Perhaps, truck manufacturers should consider the potential for major lawsuits due to not building mechanically-robust vehicles and such dependability a driver can stake his life upon.

Now MEDICAL emergencies (or the potential for them to happen) are definitely NOT trivial posting topics. Anybody considering this trade should FIRST consider their overall state of health.

One more question, how much should any American company driver expect to be paid on workman's comp should he sustain a work-related disability?

I have been on W/C at least two times in the past for back injury on the job and I only received about 66% of my normal wages.

I have read Brett's literature and stuff like W/C and medical emergencies I did not seem to find there.

I swear by Toyota reliability myself. Wouldn't be caught dead in the mountains or desert without my Tundra pickup, I swear.

Some of you "people" posting here could be "bots" for all I know. I won't mention any names. I might just go to my local truck stop and chat with some drivers in person there to really get a FEEL for this line of earning a living. Maybe I will go to my local library and pick up a coupe of books on this subject just to while the time away.

And those people and books will tell you the same things we're telling you. Go to another forum, ask what you are asking us, and you'll get the same response. Same thing with any resource you can find, for the most part. Believe me, we're not bots. Many of us have met each other in person.

With the way that you act towards us and the rest of the industry, I don't know that you're cut out for this.

Dude, you just got schooled by an 11 yr-old, who, by the way, is a lot closer to becoming a trucker than you are.

Dude, you just got schooled by an 11 yr-old, who, by the way, is a lot closer to becoming a trucker than you are.

Thanks

A Pitt-Ohio driver died a few days ago on the Penna Turnpike heading westbound near Somerset. Apparently he had a heart attack and crashed into the jersey barrier. Tragic.