Be alert and keep your distance from trucks – you never know when it might shoot a projectile at you!

Another day, another case of a motorist doing everything correctly and minding their own business on the highway, yet for some reason was put in a situation where they narrowly miss a situation where they could have died thanks to unroadworthy big trucks.

In this case, the incident happened yesterday at 3pm on the NKVE Klang-bound near the Subang turn-off. Twitter user @jfkjohan‘s wife was driving on the second left most lane when suddenly a big piece of metal dislodged itself from a big truck on the middle lane. Thankfully the metal piece only hit the car’s wheel arch and nothing more critical.

In fact, what’s the most frustrating part about this is she was doing exactly what the advice in the title of this story says – the video shows she was keeping a significant distance from the huge trucks in front of her. In this situation, what else could have been done really?

What if the metal piece had hit a more critical part like the engine bay or the windscreen? Or what if it was a motorcyclist that was in the path of the metal piece? Can you imagine what would have happened? Why are we constantly at the mercy of these huge trucks? Have the operators of these trucks no shame or guilt?

In the last few months alone we have seen multiple cases – lorry crashes into 11 cars at Shah Alam traffic lights, cement lorry crashes into 3 vehicles on PLUS, lorry crashes into vehicles on Singapore causeway, motorists changing tyre by roadside get hit by lorry. When will this madness end?

Although a dashcam captured the action, the number plate of the truck could not be identified because of the distance involved and the resolution of the dash cam. Even if it was a dashcam with a higher resolution there’s no guarantee a number plate could have been captured because dashcam footage tends to be blurry when in motion.

Perhaps PLUS Malaysia could help @jfkjohan out by checking the CCTV footage at the toll gates to identify the truck and getting in touch with him to provide the details.

As for the rest of us, it seems that every time we manage to get home safely without getting mauled by one of these big trucks is a day to be thankful indeed.