I noticed something on the seven-hour drive home over spring break: a lot of drivers don't understand truck drivers, and in turn, make the road dangerous to themselves and the men and women that drive the 18-wheelers. Truck drivers and their enormous vehicles do more to avoid traffic than people give them credit for.

With all the country music songs about driving trucks across the country, you would think Southerners may have some sympathy or empathy for these guys.

Yeah right.

I can't begin to recount the number of cars I wanted to side swipe for aggressive driving around 18-wheelers. I have a 3-year-old in the car; don't cut an 18-wheeler off on a busy two-lane road if it is clear that traffic is slowing up ahead. Don't you listen to Randy Travis? He clearly sang, "an 18-wheeler can't stop on the dime."

Here's another one: If you can't see an 18-wheelers mirrors, they can't see you behind them. It's pointless to ride their bumper. If you think they're going to move out of the way for fear that your Trailblazer is going to hit their enormous vehicle, which happens to be about 20 times the size of yours, you're kidding yourself.

It's not that I don't feel people's pain. I know it's annoying when you're on a two-lane road like Interstate 81 north, and traffic has bottled up because 18-wheelers are going slow in both lanes.

When this happens, fear not. Don't follow the Trailblazer's lead and ride their bumpers as if they will move out of your way. The reason they're in the fast lane, even though they're going slower than everyone in the fast lane, is because they're going significantly faster than an 18-wheeler in the slow lane. All they're doing is trying to pass the slower trucks. We all do it; they just can't speed up and slow down like smaller cars.

If you think they're going to move out of the way for fear that your Trailblazer is going to hit their enormous vehicle, which happens to be about 20 times the size of yours, you're kidding yourself. Back off and let them pass the slow-lane trucks. I guarantee they will immediately move out of your way once the slow lane clears. Give them a quick "thank you" by flashing your emergency lights on and off once.

In turn, it's nice to let them over when they turn their blinker on, instead of putting the pedal to the metal and speeding past them before they can move in front of you. I almost always get a blinker "thank you" when I let trucks over instead of speeding up.

For example, on my way back to Knoxville there was a sign warning drivers that a lane was closed ahead because of an accident. I noticed people in the South usually take the signs to heart and almost immediately start moving into (let's just say the left lane is the one closing ahead) the right lane. Where I come from people aren't that smart, considerate, nice or patient enough to merge early for the sake of moving traffic at a steady pace.

They clog up both lanes just to get ahead an extra half mile in the left lane. All this does is make traffic move painstakingly slower once the lanes actually merge. Truck drivers know this, and they want traffic moving as steady as possible too.

So what do they do? If they see cars starting to ride the left lane - even though that big, bright orange sign two miles back told them it was closing in about 800 feet - they plop themselves in the left lane to keep cars from jumping ahead of obedient drivers that merge early. 

The picture posted at the top of the page is one I took while in traffic. The 18-wheeler saw many cars trying to get ahead in the closing lane. So the 18-wheeler sat in the left lane, forcing cars to merge ahead of the actual merge.

They may be stinky and block my view sometimes, and maybe even cut me off, but overall my experiences with 18-wheelers have been positive. If you're good to them, they're good to you.

So roll on 18-wheeler, roll on.