Alert SAFETY STAND DOWN

["EZ"]

Our FL Governor R Desantis has introduced a bill that increases the penalties for these idiots. Also if they surround your car and start threatening you, you are allowed to power thru them. Here are two excerpts:

1. Prohibition on Obstructing Roadways: 3rd degree felony to obstruct traffic during an unpermitted protest, demonstration or violent or disorderly assembly; driver is NOT liable for injury or death caused if fleeing for safety from a mob.
2. Prohibition on Harassment in Public Accommodations: 1st degree misdemeanor for a participant in a violent or disorderly assembly to harass or intimidate a person at a public accommodation, such as a restaurant.

Common sense legislation. We need more of that in this Country. ?

 

[Roadrunner]

Okay, in the Air Force days when there was an accident we stood down and had a safety day. It's time for a RV safety day so stop and take note.

In the Newmar Owners Group on Facebook today was a post about a truck driver lady that was on the phone with her husband and mentioned she thought she hit someone. That was the last he heard from her, she got out and was beaten to death. Apparently this is what's going on these days, tossing objects in front of trucks to get them to stop, in our delightful peaceful well behaved youth so well raised by their strict parents. I digress...

So, it's only a matter of time before this happens to a RVer because you know we are the opposite of these thugs that have nothing to lose. Your armament will mean nothing against the numbers that may be against you. In the current times you better be very smart about where you're driving and when you're driving AND where you're staying. Truckers are attracting this attention, better think twice about being in the same area they are. We've seen it on TV, the media is not reporting this "peaceful protest" (murder).

After Nov it could get better but my guess is it's going to get far worse. Until people get back to work, covid or no covid and are no longer being paid to be thugs by the government will this improve.

So I say again, learn from the trucker story posted on Facebook by a Newmar RV owner and stop and think about this NOW! We may feel pretty lucky that we have the ability to travel and vacation because we have RV's. We, when traveling, are putting ourselves in harms way. Don't be complacent thinking well I'm just going here to there. Be AWARE. While I don't use WAZE for RV navigation, it can be good in telling you of situations ahead. Not sure what situations it is helping with other than police, accidents, traffic etc. but it may be worth having running along side your GPS for road awareness. It doesn't have to be navigating a route to tell you this information.

I recently got a RAM mount with suction cup for my phone which goes on the glass left of me and is left of my Garmin GPS I use for navigation. You may want to consider a phone mount as well and bring up waze while traveling as an idea.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LVTEJTW/?tag=rvf01-20

Drive safe and be smart. As I mentioned months ago, if you have to take a longer route around a populated area, do so! Keep rural!

Another thing to watch out for is someone tampering with your rig. I always do a full walkaround before we depart so when we left a restaurant I did my walkaround and noticed a missing valve stem cap and that both tires on the right side of our fifth wheel looked low. Seemed strange, because I had just checked all tires on the truck and the trailer before we departed a campground a couple of hours earlier. Gauge showed the tires at 35 and 42 PSI. Aired them back up to 65 and after 3 weeks they are both still OK so there is no leak. We also padlock our 5th wheel hitch, because we met a couple that had someone unlatch theirs while they were parked and caused major damage to their truck when they pulled forward. Do your walkaround before driving, it could save lives.

 

[FL-JOE]

A couple weeks ago we made a slow run from the north down to our leased site in Florida. There were only three medium cities we had to navigate through and none of them have had issues with "peaceful protesters" in 2020. It didn't matter that Nashville, Birmingham, and Montgomery hadn't had serious issues I still timed my drive through them for noon or earlier.

Another thing RVers should be doing with all the unrest going on is investigate surrounding areas of RV parks they are planning on staying at. If you are booking at an RV park you have never been to it only takes a few minutes to pull it up on google earth. Go to the street view and check all around the area. Go out several blocks and see what is around there. If you see abandoned buildings in a depressed area then maybe you should book a different place. Same goes for stopping at Walmarts you have never been to. Spend a little time checking things out on google earth and you might save yourself some serious safety issues.

It is sad we find ourselves even talking about pre-planning this way in our country.