24
Aug
2014
It’s a typical mid-January Monday morning. The weekend ended too soon and the long grind of the work week looms ahead. You start your normal morning routine — making coffee, eating breakfast, taking a shower, dressing and warming up the car. The sun still hasn’t peeked over the distant horizon, and the temperature dropped well below freezing last night. Looks like a good time to try out that new winter jacket you got for Christmas.
While traveling the nation’s highways, how often do you see pieces of tire and tread belts along the sides of the road? So how do we keep our tires from becoming part of this road debris? The answer is vehicle tire maintenance.
It was 3 a.m. on a Sunday when I received a call from the brigade staff duty NCO. As a company first sergeant, you dread the middle-of-the-night phone call because the news is never good.
As Soldiers in Aviation, we are tasked to operate many pieces of equipment. We are taught how to assess risk and mitigate it. However, dozens of Soldiers are killed every year operating a common piece of equipment — their private motor vehicle.
As Soldiers, we frequently hear about the dangers of drinking and driving. While I definitely agree drinking and driving is bad, I believe there is a more common activity that not only rivals it, but possibly surpasses it in danger — fatigued driving.