Channel 19
84 OVERDRIVE NOVEMBER 2009 Overdrive, 3200 Rice Mine Road N.E., Tuscaloosa, AL 35406, or e-mail tdills@rrpub.com. Channel 19 Todd Dills SEND US STUFF Driving by sonar Next time you want to scream Are you blind? at a reck-less four-wheeler, be prepared for an affirmative answer. Technology is enabling blind and other low-vision drivers to navigate road courses in a modified four-wheel buggy devel-oped by Virginia Tech's Robotics and Mechanisms Laborato-ry, the university's Transportation Research Institute reports. The buggy features a laser sensor mounted at the front that functions similarly to sonar. It maps the terrain and sends sig-nals to a computer, which provides drivers voice commands and vibrations to help them respond to obstacles. The voice heard down under Australian Truckin' Life founder Malcolm John-son was inspired by none other than Overdrive, the Voice of the American Trucker, when he launched the magazine in 1976, according to former Managing Editor Jim Gibson's obituary on Johnson published in Truckin' Life this summer: Malcolm got the idea for the magazine while enjoying several large drams of amber fluid at a Brisbane Truck Show. He was leaning on the bar at the show listening to drivers' beefs. A few days later he got his hands on some copies of [ Overdrive] ... and found the conditions Australian drivers worked under were similar to those of their U.S. counterparts. From the beginning, Truckin' Life's tag-line has been the voice of the Australian trucker. For your daily dose of trucking humor, oddities and coverage in the media, visit: www.channel19. blogspot.com. In 's home base Overdrive of Tuscaloosa, Ala., in Sep-tember, truckers pitched in to help police foil a suicide attempt. As a man stood on the ledge of the I-20/59 bridge over McFar-land Boulevard, police enlisted haulers with van trailers to build a platform under the bridge. A gallery of Tuscaloosa News photos (tuscaloosanews.com, search Interstate standoff ) show, among other images, police unrolling an inflatable catch device atop two vans. The man ended up walking away from the edge. Lending a helping rig FROM THE BLOG Issues here and yonder Have cell, won't text Just for giggles I took my truck to an empty industrial park ... got up to a roaring 5 mph, and tried texting, wrote an owner-operator posting as Mark's Moving Corner on the Channel 19 blog. Peeled off the right mirror on a phone pole. Think I'll stick to Bluetooth headset voice calls. Running my mouth and the truck at the same time I can do ... just ask my wife. How about some detention pay? If you think the delays at our border crossings are bad, consider Bahrain, where waits of longer than a week are common. Abdulhakim Shammary, chair of a Bah-rainian transport service, proposed to the Gulf Daily News that drivers crossing the King Fahd Causeway into or out of Saudi Arabia should have 24-hour fast lanes for empty trucks to focus inspectors' efforts on their loaded counterparts. Truckers turned their vans into platform trailers. Pho to b y Mic hael P almer Malcolm Johnson