By Brady Lang

Local tow truck driver implores public to slow down following close call

Jan 14, 2019 | 1:00 PM

It was a close call for a local tow truck driver on Saturday.

Tanner Stevenson, who is a tow truck driver based at Lashberg Towing, was hooking his winch to a vehicle in the ditch, and when he started pulling him out, he heard every tow truck driver’s nightmare.

A loud bang, followed by the winched vehicle jerking towards the tow truck driver, hitting him in the shins. Another vehicle collided where his control panel for the winch was as he was towing it out. Stevenson was luckily uninjured in the incident.

“(I ended up with) a little bruise on one of my legs,” he said. “It didn’t hit me very hard, just something enough to alert me, like ‘whoa, something just happened.’”

Stevenson decided to write about the incident on Facebook, making a public post in hopes of just alerting some of the drivers to slow down, and be careful on the roads. Since just before midnight on Sunday, his post was shared over 6,000 times across North America.

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“I’ve had a lot of positive feedback, messages and friend requests,” he said. “If it helps just five people slow down and be courteous, I just wanted to have a positive feedback. Social media was a good place to do that.”

Although the Internet reception is nice for the truck driver, he said the message is more important when it comes to people slowing down on the roads. While provincial laws state drivers should slow their speed to 60 km/h when passing emergency vehicles, Stevenson said many seem to ignore the law. 

“Slow down, move over, be courteous,” he said. “You can save a lot of lives. I’m one of the fortunate ones. Just slow down.”

brady.lang@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @BradyLangCJNB