Happy Halloween

It's Halloween. And for reasons unknown to me we persist in celebrating the mad, the frightening and the macabre even with Donald Trump in the White House.

My low-cal contribution to the holiday is this retelling of my encounters with bombers.

For those fortunate-enough not to know what bombers are, read on.

I happen to live two communities removed from one featuring a gravel pit. Which means the area's roads are thick with what I call bombers—trucks with open, double-axled trailers infamous for spewing gravel and stones onto the vehicles behind them.

When they're not pounding our roads into dust, their drivers alternately menace and foul traffic. In my eight years in the region, no other type of truck (with the possible exception of pick-ups) makes driving so reliably frustrating. Or dangerous.

Like all truckers, they endure their share of impatient motorists who zoom around them with righteous indignation. But in first-hand accounts, they give far worse than they get.

Given their enormous weight, they are, by nature, lumbering. Traveling behind one on a two-lane road chock-full of traffic signals will excite even the most-serene bowel. Worse, when presented with a four-lane road, their drivers frequently opt for the so-called fast lane.

'Slow Traffic Keep Right' may as well be posted in Sanskrit.

As a result, they evoke mass panic in our driving population. This is amplified when one is trapped behind two bombers—one thoughtfully occupying each lane on a four-lane road. Given a choice between this and driving with a swarm of mosquitoes inside my car, I'll take the mosquitoes.

Alas, bombers do not always travel at such modest speeds. On roads not choked with stop lights, bombers reveal their true selves—frustrated BMW drivers trapped in seven-ton gravel haulers. Yes, they like to go fast.

As a bus driver, I'll never forget the two bombers that came roaring out of the pre-dawn darkness just as I began a protected left-hand turn. I hit the brakes with such force I activated the bus's event camera.

It was a very good thing no one was aboard.

Then there was the time I was headed to work, traveling a rural two-lane at my customary five-over. As I entered a sweeping right-hand curve, I became aware of a vehicle attempting to pass on my left.

No surprise—it was a bomber, trying to pass despite the double yellow lines and oncoming early-morning traffic. He nearly jack-knifed after slamming on his air brakes.

Just two weeks ago, there was yet-another bomber who forced me across the double yellow line after coming up on my right at a merge. He was going to get ahead of me or remove the passenger side of my car trying.

My mate and I were lucky there was no oncoming traffic, as a head-on collision would have been inevitable.

If asked, the bomber's driver would no doubt state he had checked for oncoming traffic before forcing me off the road. Because that's the kind of drivers they are.

Yeah.

I took the license number and filed a complaint with the local police. The owners stated the trailer had been leased to an independent owner-operator (of course) and as such they were unable to identify the driver.

I lacked a trailer number or any information from the cab, so like a visit to a government agency while I possessed information it wasn't the right information.

Sigh.

There are contrarians who would maintain that the bombers infesting our roads represents a healthy and thriving economy, and that I should be grateful for such. And I agree--in part. They're certainly good for the manufacturer of the dash cam I just purchased.

Yep—my next encounter with a bomber is going to be a hi-def spectacle which will be distributed to finer police departments everywhere with YouTube not far behind.

Smile, bro. Are you ready for your close-up?