Please wear your seatbelts and slow down....

hyldemoer · Post by **hyldemoer** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 12:48 pm

When my kids were little I once merged onto the expressway with a car (orange Gremlin (a supersubcompact of questionable quality)) full of them and their playmates (on our way to the zoo).
There was an eighteen wheeler in front of me, an eighteen wheeler that came up behind me, and an eighteen wheeler that cruised to the left side of me.

About a quarter mile down the road the eighteen wheeler to the side of me (still in the right hand, slow, lane) started to merge into my lane with me having no way to speed up or slow down because of the other eighteen wheelers.

Picture me honking my horn like crazy and the kids and I screaming out the open windows.
The truck behind me refused to slow down so I had to merge over onto the gravel soft shoulder at 70 mpr.
Thank heavens there was a place I could merge over but doing it at 70 mpr was very scary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Btw, in the state of Illinois its illegal to cruise in the left hand (fast) lane of a multi-laned expressway. That lane is meant only for passing.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:09 pm

loud ain't it!

Chicago 1971: boxed by four of them at 70 for over a mile while on motorcycle...

'spose it's a local game?

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:29 pm

missy wrote:ok - got another one to add.....

Traffic flowing along in the fast lane, we're going past a semi - then the car(s) in front of me slow down and now I'm in the "blind spot" of the semi. I really, really try to NEVER be in the blind spot of a semi (I like my car). So my choiced are to slow down (and get everyone behind me ticked off) or stay where I am and hope that the traffic speeds up so I can go forward some, or that the truck doesn't try to change lanes.

Okay, so missy could not speed up to get past the truck. Right? The cars in front of her, in the fast lane, had slowed down. That is how she ended up in the blind spot. Speeding up to pass the truck was not an option.

So should she have slowed down to let the truck in the next lane get ahead so she was out of the blind spot or should she have kept the flow of slowed-down traffic going smoothly and stayed in the blind spot? From how I read this, her question has not been answered. Which of these two choices is the least dangerous?

Flyingcursor · Post by **Flyingcursor** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:44 pm

Well Cynth, I'll address the question. How many cars were in a position to where the truck couldn't have pulled over anyway thereby making the blind spot moot?

However I hate being in blind spots so I think I would have gradually slowed down.

On the other side of the coin, I really cringe when I see a car pass a truck then suddenly slam their breaks. I've seen this happen a few times on busy highways. They don't seem to realize a big vehicle like a semi cannot stop as fast.

Two of my uncles were OTR drivers for over 2 decades. One of them, after 31 years with no accidents, flipped his loaded rig to avoid a car that had pulled that very stunt. He was not injured.

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 2:37 pm

Flyingcursor wrote:Well Cynth, I'll address the question. How many cars were in a position to where the truck couldn't have pulled over anyway thereby making the blind spot moot?

However I hate being in blind spots so I think I would have gradually slowed down.

On the other side of the coin, I really cringe when I see a car pass a truck then suddenly slam their breaks. I've seen this happen a few times on busy highways. They don't seem to realize a big vehicle like a semi cannot stop as fast.

Two of my uncles were OTR drivers for over 2 decades. One of them, after 31 years with no accidents, flipped his loaded rig to avoid a car that had pulled that very stunt. He was not injured.

I think I understand what you are saying about other cars---ones in front of missy that the truck could see and that would have prevented the truck from changing into missy's lane---and I guess we don't know the answer to that. I think I would have slowed down too.

I've never quite known where the blind spots are and the drawings I've seen don't seem to mean much to me for some reason. It's probably just common sense but the explanation below helped me judge my position:

Side blind spot: Be careful when passing a large vehicle. If you can't see the driver's face in his or her side mirror or window, he or she can't see you and may not know you're there.
Front blind spot: When passing a large vehicle, make sure that you can see the entire front of the truck or bus in your inside rear-view mirror before you pull back in front. It takes a large vehicle twice the time and room to stop as it does a car.

There are millions of trucks on the interstate here and it was a little hard to get used to driving among them. I've driven around an awful lot of them by now and I think that, in general, they are driven better than cars. I do give them a wide berth though. I'm glad your uncle wasn't hurt in the crash.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 2:52 pm

missy should be on the driver's side of the truck. What blind spot?

djm · Post by **djm** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:06 pm

Its a big mistake to assume all truck drivers are good drivers. Many of them are, of course, but a lot of them are retarded, or zapped out on amphetamines, which is just as bad.

I try not to be near trucks, but if it can't be helped I try to stay in the lane to the left of them, and pass at the first opportunity. I have several times seen trucks force cars off the road, either to the left or the right. I have had them swerve into the lane immediately in front of me without looking or signalling (this is where I learned to especially fear flatbeds). Truckers get their vehicles up to speed, and don't want to lose RPMs, so they are just as prone to hopping lanes as the idiot in the smaller, more manouverable car, rather than slow down. Trucks are not your friends.

djm

Chiffed · Post by **Chiffed** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 4:10 pm

djm wrote:Its a big mistake to assume all truck drivers are good drivers. Many of them are, of course, but a lot of them are retarded, or zapped out on amphetamines, which is just as bad.

I try not to be near trucks, but if it can't be helped I try to stay in the lane to the left of them, and pass at the first opportunity. I have several times seen trucks force cars off the road, either to the left or the right. I have had them swerve into the lane immediately in front of me without looking or signalling (this is where I learned to especially fear flatbeds). Truckers get their vehicles up to speed, and don't want to lose RPMs, so they are just as prone to hopping lanes as the idiot in the smaller, more manouverable car, rather than slow down. Trucks are not your friends.

djm

True 'nuff. And when they do the big inspection sweeps around here, construction grinds to a halt because so many dumptrucks are impounded, mostly for brakes. In my emergency driving course, we learned the difference between emergency maneuvers with perfectly adjusted airbrakes, and badly adjusted ones. Scary.

SteveShaw · Post by **SteveShaw** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:33 pm

Some of us Brits need translator's notes for "dumptrucks," "flatbeds" and "semis." In the UK a semi is a house with another house to one side, attached to it, and fresh air on the other.

jsluder · Post by **jsluder** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:39 pm

SteveShaw wrote:Some of us Brits need translator's notes for "dumptrucks," "flatbeds" and "semis." In the UK a semi is a house with another house to one side, attached to it, and fresh air on the other.

A US semi:

Flatbed:

Dumptruck:

It's the dumptrucks with the pup trailers you really have to watch out for around here. They drive like there are no other vehicles on the road.

hyldemoer · Post by **hyldemoer** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:39 pm

SteveShaw wrote:Some of us Brits need translator's notes for "dumptrucks," "flatbeds" and "semis." In the UK a semi is a house with another house to one side, attached to it, and fresh air on the other.

What does "eighteen wheeler" translate to in British English?

SteveShaw · Post by **SteveShaw** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:05 pm

hyldemoer wrote:
SteveShaw wrote:Some of us Brits need translator's notes for "dumptrucks," "flatbeds" and "semis." In the UK a semi is a house with another house to one side, attached to it, and fresh air on the other.
What does "eighteen wheeler" translate to in British English?

Yeah, that was another I was worrying about. A big lorry with 18 wheels I suppose. A bloody big lorry in other words.

SteveShaw · Post by **SteveShaw** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:14 pm

The main problem in Cornwall is tractors. The b*stards. They come out on to the main roads, trundle along at 16mph running on tax-free diesel (yet another subsidy paid to our ever-complaining, polluting, parasitic, environment-bashing farming community) and cheerfully bung up the traffic for miles behind. They tend to come out during the busy morning rush or when there are lots of tourists on the road, e.g. at weekends, on purpose. They never yield to following traffic, they generally have no stop lights or number plates and they smear the road with sh1te when they're not dropping oil all over the road from their routinely ill-maintained engines. Apart from that I love tractors to bits.

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:30 pm

Denny wrote:missy should be on the driver's side of the truck. What blind spot?

Denny, this website shows pictures of blind spots all around the truck. They look like the drawing in the Iowa driver's manual. I guess I should make a copy of the picture and put it in my car.

http://www.mtq.gouv.qc.ca/en/camionnage ... /index.asp
<img src="http://www.mtq.gouv.qc.ca/images/securi ... "width=175>

djm · Post by **djm** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:37 pm

SteveShaw wrote:They never yield to following traffic, they generally have no stop lights or number plates and they smear the road with sh1te when they're not dropping oil all over the road from their routinely ill-maintained engines.

Jealousy can be so ugly. Come on, Steve, confess: you'd love to drag one of these babies through the banking district, now wouldn't you?

djm