Thanks to increasing pressure in the trucking industry, this is becoming all too common:
Roadside litter comes in all shapes and sizes — from dirty diapers to syringes — but there’s one category that out-grosses the rest: trucker bombs.
Most drivers whiz along the nation’s highways largely oblivious to their roadside surroundings. But next time you are out there, take a closer look.
“As soon as you look for it you’ll see it,” says Megan Warfield, litter programs coordinator at Washington State’s Department of Ecology. “You just see them glistening in the sun. It’s just gross.”
They are trucker bombs, plastic jugs full of urine tossed by truckers, and even non-truckers, who refuse to make a proper potty stop to relieve themselves.
The state hasn’t counted how many such jugs are found each year, but a single, small county decided to do its own tally. “In one year,” Warfield says, “one crew found 2,666 bottles of urine, 67 feces-covered items, not including diapers, and 18 syringes.”
2,600 bottles of urine?!? Holy crap!
Apparently it’s such a problem in North Dakota that the state spent $15,000 to outfit their highway maintenance tractors with shields after workers were splashed by urine 20 to 40 times a year after running over bottles of urine with lawnmowers.
That’s just sick and wrong, and is going to make think twice when I’m looking at garbage along Hwy. 97 as I drive home. Thanks to Al’s Morning Meeting for the links.
Comments
There are as many truck drivers out there who think the habit is as gross and disgusting as there are the many who do not drive truck.
We must be careful to not assume the “trucker bomb” came from a truck driver. It could have as easily been dumped by the driver of a motorhome, passenger car or million dollar bus. We’ve seen it from all sectors.
Litter requlations need to be more strongly enforced in all states with increasing fines if need be. The fines could be used to provide more adequate disposal areas.
That is so disgusting!
Next time you decide to eat at the local trucker hang out, just remember how many pee in the parking lot. *shudder*.
What puzzles me is why the problem is so much more severe in Oregon? Drive I-5 south through Oregon and you see hundreds of the Trucker Bombs (aka Oregon Road Wine) until you cross into norther Cal where the problem is almost non existent. Same is true heading east on I-84 into Idaho. Do truckers have a grudge against Oregon or does ODOT just pick up the litter less frequently than Caltrans and IDOT?