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Comment by starwed | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you missed the last line? It wasn't a "possibility", but an account of an actual event.

That said, I'm always saddened that folk don't consider such a possibility in interaction with strangers -- especially when it doesn't cost them anything. Assuming the worst of someone to protect yourself is one thing, but all too often I see such an assumption used as a reason to get angry at a stranger. Quite why people search for reasons to be angry I'm not sure, but it sadly seems to be a human trait. :(

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Re: the death of the sister: Maybe you missed the last line? It wasn't a "possibility", but an account of an actual event.

That's actually the biggest problem I had with this article. It's making an appeal to our emotions by implicitly suggesting that all truck drivers, at all times, always have some emotionally-crippling tragedy occurring in their lives. Even presupposing that's true, it would suggest that everyone (not just truck drivers) are probably in the same boat, so truck drivers in this sense are no different from the rest of us.

But of course, everyone doesn't have a personal tragedy happen to them every week. The majority of the time, truck drivers have just as much (or as little) personal tragedy as the rest of us. Yes, it's unfortunate that the job also kinda sucks (sometimes? all the time?), but that's the case with many different kinds of jobs.

Yes, I agree with the generic sentiment that, in interactions with strangers, you should consider that you have no idea what's going on in their lives at that particular moment. But in this case I'm more interested in the facts that more likely than not affect all truck drivers: the mediocre pay, long hours behind the wheel, scheduling difficulties, pressure to meet deadlines that maybe aren't healthy or safe, etc.

I think the point was that unlike some of us (most of us?) the nature of the work makes it impossible for truckers to "leave early" or take a day off to respond to personal emergencies.

If you mean "us" in the sense of the HN community, you're probably right. But those restrictions are likely no different than what the majority of workers across all professions in the US (and the world?) are subject to. Truckers are certainly not unique.

It's really quite widespread. Cracked has a great article talking about it: http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

It's a possibility, but how many truck drivers does this emotional situation with the sister apply to? Not many specifically. I'm sure they all do miss their families, however.

The sister thing in particular doesn't tend to apply in general, but something does.

The article says "out 10 days and back for a couple" but that vastly depends on what kind of trucking you do. My dad's current schedule, for example, has him out for 5 or 6 and in for 1 or 2 (in a good week; recently there's been a few where he's only been out for 3 or 4 days which is a huge strain on the finances), but in the past he's had some short haul routes where he was home every day just long enough to sleep and before that, when I was young, he did some long hauls where I sometimes didn't see him for a month or more.

For the long haulers, even if their sister didn't die, odds are something has happened that they haven't had a chance to deal with.

The real take away message from this, though, is just respect and not to get upset if a truck is slowing you down for a minute.

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