Driving and driving well was a career and you treated the...

Driving and driving well was a career and you treated the equipment like it was your own and followed instruction ( as it was a good as a rule) . If you bent it or broke it you didn't just walk away and hop in another you were off the road or stood down till fixed. these days with other people equipment it is just jump in drive it hard, get there and never look back. Amazing results in big mining machinery with the women being 15% more fuel efficient and 30% less maintenance than blokes as they followed instructions and now they are used as the template for onboard monitoring. Like airline pilots who get a bonus for fuel efficiency all of a sudden they wouldn't roll out to end of a runway and idle for 30 minutes nor bang it straight up to cruising height and straight through storms .

Hopped on buses and told em that they are leaking oil - " no worries mate - dash lights will tell me when there is a issue " Read about the fire the next day and cause was dipstick ( one on the motor) was not inserted correctly and oil over turbo/ exhaust ignited. was so tempted to write a letter to transport dept. No worries they have now installed fire suppression when what they should have installed is number 1 eyeball and number 1 commonsense. arghhhhh Small issue $200k bus gone and luckily no one hurt .
The art of driving and pleasure of knowing you are doing it well and machinery will last is getting lost as people believe electronics will fix everything. You are just a employee these days not part of a team and you have unlimited resources and little responsibility apart from getting from one spot to another.

We come from a different age where in a road ranger box it was not about getting your gears but about not having downtime and having to replace selector forks and bearings for doing it while they where always loaded rather than sliding them in at correct revs and times and learning to use a splitter correctly and you could do it with your eyes closed or ears covered just by vibration on the stick. Ohhh and if you didn't it could well bite you back and crack your wrist. Yep it is called consequences , experience and common sense and are all history these days