On March 27, 2015, https://www.et-radio.de , Udo Skoppeck , Truckonline , Danika’s Blog and my Wenigkeit jointly reported that from today, April 1, 2015, there would be an important change regarding the requirement to wear high-visibility vests.
Well, some recognized it correctly, because the report was a fake. How else could it be, since it’s April 1st and people usually play jokes on that day. Although this one has a long-term effect.
What didn’t surprise us was that many reacted quickly to this report, getting to 180. It even went so far that some wanted to do something to Merkel.
What also didn’t surprise us was that the post appeared on the website of the Professional Truckers’ “Magazine” (<– Note: The site no longer exists, hence linked to web.archiv.org.) without any source attribution. Because the operator of this rather less serious site is well known for stealing articles from elsewhere and publishing them on his site in a manner that constitutes copyright infringement. In this case, it wasn’t the first false report he had published. 😀 Thank you for that, Herr Radüge.
We were surprised, however, that there were people who took the matter so seriously that even Mimikama was consulted to see whether the matter was really worth taking seriously.
Was gab es einen Grund?
Yes, there was a reason for this April Fool’s joke. Early in March, I noticed a post on Facebook claiming that there was a new law according to which you would be fined for driving longer than 5 minutes at 85 km/h on the motorway.
Although this law is not new, as it has been the case for years that the maximum speed for trucks on motorways is 80 km/h, the reactions to this post made me smile and also made me think about how to top it even further.
The solution came two days later, when I saw some drivers again, sitting in trucks with high-visibility vests or jackets, driving around the country. So I quickly discussed this with Udo Skoppeck regarding the implementation. It had to be done, because a single blog post alone wouldn’t create credibility for such a “report.” Thus, I also involved Maik Erdmann from TruckOnline and Daniela Kampschulte from Danika’s Blog. As a final touch, the idea came to include the whole thing in a radio broadcast. So André Sahorn from ET-Radio was also quickly infected with the idea.
The result of this “brainstorming” can be read since March 27, 2015 .
Although some other sites, like the Trucker Job Board, also spread this article, it is still nothing more than an April Fool’s joke.
So once again: The whole story is an April Fool’s joke, and unfortunately, many of you fell for it.
Don’t be angry, it’s just the first of April, and that’s just what people do. And since it was my idea, I don’t take any responsibility for it 😀.
Update on September 18, 2025
Since this and also the other article on this topic are now over 10 years old, I have updated both. Not only regarding spelling, but also updated the links or removed them because the respective sites no longer exist.
