Rolling westbound on a major highway at night, with my high beams on. I was passed by a state trooper. Normally, I flick off the high beams when I’m overtaken at night. This time I didn’t, forgetting that they were on. The trooper hit his blues, brake lights flaring.
The trooper pulled me over. His eyes were popping out and the neck vein was there. I had the driver side window down as he walked to my door. “Everything okay?” I asked him. He just glared up at me. He went to the front of the truck, looking at my headlights.
He walked back beneath my window. “You know you had your high beams on when I passed you?”
“Really? If I did, IÂ just forgot that they were live, sir.”
“You could cause a lot of trouble doing that. Did you know it’s against the law?”
“First of all, calm down,” I said.
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” he said. I had met a variety of law enforcement as a professional driver of a big truck. Most of the time, treating them with respect went a long way. Every now and then, that didn’t work. You could smell it when you were around someone with a screw loose, and the blue line to back him up. Ever been there? Your best bet is to keep your mouth shut unless asked a direct question. He took my cab card and CDL license.
“You giving me a ticket?”
“Yes you are getting a ticket.”
The state trooper walked back after about twenty minutes, with a little clipboard and handed it up to me, along with my papers.
I found myself thinking: That trooper was so angry with me? he should have been pulling over dozens of autos which had nearly blinded me in the past. And would again that night, before I ever got home.
Understand, this is not about two vehicles approaching one another from opposite directions. That’s a whole different conversation. This is about two vehicles going the same direction, with one going at a greater speed.
Part memoir, part tall tale and second-hand story, part instructional manual: Chris DeBrie’s “Check Your Tandems” is the fictionalized account a truck driver as he moves from newbie “greenhorn” to seasoned professional.
One older driver told me that when passing cars on the highway flared up his sidemirror with 
high beams, he would use his truck’s spotlight to return the favor. “Almost always works,” he said.
I never did try that. I figured that if I ever spotlit someone out of spite in that way, one of three things were liable to happen:
- The driver would be an angry cop;
- The driver would get surprised into a wreck, or;
- The driver would pull up on my window with a weapon.
Not worth it. I normally just swung my side mirror so that the bright lights were not in my frame. It’s all about what you can take.