WAYLAND, MO -- It looks like Missouri highways are getting safer.
The Missouri Highway Patrol tells us the number of commercial motor vehicle fatality crashes fell 23 percent between 2005 and 2007.
KHQA's Chad Douglas recently went to the Flying J truck stop in Wayland to talk to some experts, the truck drivers that see the problems first hand everyday.
When you spend as much time on the highway as a professional truck driver, you see just about everything.
What is the number one thing you see drivers do on the roads?
"Not use their blinkers. They don't like being behind us. They pass, and then want to exit a half mile away," says truck driver Eric White.
What's the worst you've seen?
"When they pass you, they have a tendency to slam on their breaks and cut you off real close," says driver Larry Lindemann.
What's the worst you've seen?
"Too many. I wouldn't know where to start," says driver Dave Brincks.
Here's one place to start, be aware of your surroundings. The drivers I talked with told me they see so many drivers not paying attention to the task at hand.
In the 35 years you've been a driver, has this gotten better or worse?
"Worse," says Brincks.
The reason, is hard to say. There's more traffic on the roads these days, people seem to be in a bigger hurry to get place, and there are more distractions like i-pods and cells phones.
"People who talk without a headset tend to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. They don't pay attention to what they're car is doing because they are too busy doing this," adds White.
Another issue truck drivers have is they feel car drivers don't understand how long it takes a semi to stop.
"Your car weighs two ton. We weigh 40. We can't stop on a dime," says White.
And then there's the issue of the blindspots.
Here's a good thing to remember. Look in this mirror. If you can't see the driver's face, then he can't see you.
"I own a motorcycle too and I've done that experiment. I got up real close to the back of a semi. I couldn't see him, and he couldn't see me," explains Lindemann.
One of the drivers says he thinks people would have a better understanding if they were more familiar with a big rig.
He says he'd like to see a semi truck orientation while teenagers take drivers education.
He says two days around a big truck will let you see how they turn differently, take longer to accelerate, and they can be hard to see out of.
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