* Mato Grosso - Brazil’s "Highway of Death"
Rondonopolis,MG,Brazil -Reuters, by Nacho Doce -November 2, 2012: ... Marcondes and his father, also a truck driver, know the highway that he was going to take from Rondonopolis to Sorriso very well. It’s the highway famous for frequent accidents, where drivers pay little attention to the law and the narrow single lanes mean that trucks nearly touch as they pass each other in opposite directions...
This road that bisects unending plantations of cereal grain is full of potholes caused by thousands of fully loaded trucks a day, each weighing nearly 70 tons... It was a Brazilian movie that sparked my interest in the lives of truck drivers here, and I wanted to see if they were really as portrayed... It was the latest of my dream trips – 5,000 kilometers and 10 days spent inside a truck, waiting as they loaded and unloaded grain cargo, sleeping in the top bunk inside the cabin, showering and eating in the same places as the truckers, and using the occasional stops to photograph different aspects of the journey...
One of the reasons for our interest in trucking was to see the results of the government’s new rule mandating rest periods for drivers. Their goal is to limit the number of hours that truckers drive without rest, and reduce accidents. At our first rest stop with Marcondes, who heeded this new rule, I photographed another driver sleeping in a hammock that he tied to his truck... This trip had been a wonderful experience in every way... After saying goodbye and thanking Marcondes I had to hitch a ride in another truck towards Sao Paulo...
My adventure was complete...Labels: infrastructures, trucker stories
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed")
.jpg)
One of the reasons for our interest in trucking was to see the results of the government’s new rule mandating rest periods for drivers. Their goal is to limit the number of hours that truckers drive without rest, and reduce accidents. At our first rest stop with Marcondes, who heeded this new rule, I photographed another driver sleeping in a hammock that he tied to his truck... This trip had been a wonderful experience in every way... After saying goodbye and thanking Marcondes I had to hitch a ride in another truck towards Sao Paulo... 
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home