Yahoo Finance This scary near miss on a Newfoundland highway 'an everyday thing' for truck driver
A dangerous near miss involving an SUV speeding between two transport trucks is the latest act of dangerous driving Newfoundland truck driver Tony Power has seen, and he says it's becoming all too common.
The video was captured on his truck's dashcam, which shows a car passing his 75-foot-long truck on the Trans-Canada Highway about 10 kilometres east of Doyles. The car flies by Power, while a transport truck approaches in the oncoming lane, and narrowly squeezes between the two trucks to avoid a collision.
Power told CBC's Here & Now on Tuesday that he himself had just moved over from the passing lane when he checked his mirror and saw the car coming.
"I was talking to my wife on the phone at the time 'cause the winds were up and she was monitoring from home," Power said.
"When I looked I see this vehicle coming. I was well out of the passing lane, said to my wife, 'Jesus, where's he going?' And there he was."
WATCH | Tony Power narrowly avoids a dangerous collision in this dashcam video:
The RCMP says traffic officers on Newfoundland's west coast are conducting an investigation into to see if charges are warranted.
"I don't think you can get much closer without there being a collision," said Sgt. Matt Christie, who works in traffic services in St. John's, after watching the video. "If there would have been a crash, the likelihood of surviving that for anybody in the SUV would have been slim to none."
Power said he's seen several similar incidents over his time on the roads, including an incident in which he was almost pushed off the road trying to avoid a passing vehicle.
"The signs is there, 'yield' is on the road, the signs is on both sides of the road that centre lane has to yield. But you know, people just don't read.… If I lock up the brakes, I lose control of my truck, game over. If you lose your steering control, it's game over," he said.
"I guess I've become immune to it. It's just an everyday thing. To figure out what people are thinking — they can't be thinking."
Power says preventing such incidents needs to be about more than talking about near misses and videos going viral on social media.
"After seven days, it's over and forgotten about and people go on. They don't look at what can happen. They don't look at those accident scenes that first responders show up to," he said.
"It's just forgotten about."
Christie says it's important for drivers to focus on the task at hand — driving their vehicles — and avoid making potentially dangerous decisions. The holiday season can make an accident especially painful, he said.
"I've responded to a number of crashes over the years around this time of year, and we always seem to hear of it," he said.
"These crashes are particularly difficult to respond to, but when we look at this time of year, they're extra difficult."
