A 73-year-old man is celebrating his 51st year of driving a UPS truck without being involved in an accident. It’s a remarkable safety streak, one that left his coworkers in awe of his accomplishment. “He is one of a kind,” a UPS spokesman said.
The 73-year-old started his accident-free run in 1962, and over the past 51 years, he has driven more than 800,000 miles in a UPS truck without even getting into a fender-bender (it’s possible he drove as much as 900,000 miles, but no one is exactly sure).
While this man’s accomplishments certainly deserve praise, we want to go back to the comment the spokesman made: “He is one of a kind.” It couldn’t be more true, as UPS employs more than 6,000 truck drivers, and it is very rare to even hear of a truck driver safety streak that spans even a couple of decades. The fact is, trucks get into accidents, and usually the results are fairly catastrophic. These large vehicles are tough to maneuver; they are heavy; they carry a lot of force into an accident; and as a result, the crashes usually deal serious or fatal injuries to the people involved.
That’s where insurance companies step in, as they try to sort out the particulars of the crash. The policies of the people involved could help cover their injuries, but sometimes that falls short. As a result, injured victims often lash out at insurers to try and get extra compensation. With truck accidents, there could be many insurer’s at play: for the victims, the truck drivers and the truck company.
Source: UPI, “Michigan UPS driver reaches 51 years without an accident,” Oct. 28, 2013