Anyone noticing more frequent "bad" truck wrecks, lately?

Just elogs

 

Statistically heavy trucks aren't deathtraps, by comparison, I do avoid interstates in my car when I have enough time, definitely on the way home.

Who am I kidding, there's a wreck every other day on the way there. No one has enough time to drive relatively slow, unless they're in a traffic jam (or merging to cause one). In a way I'm glad they're all going for it, so I can take other roads where you wouldn't know it was rush hour, most days.

I think its really a problem of perception, people generally don't feel they are going fast enough unless they are immediately behind or passing another vehicle at all times, and they cannot judge speed well enough to avoid collisions. I see it all day, when keeping a following distance, cars (and some trucks) are so batty they can only tell that what's in front of me is travelling at my speed too if they come into my lane and almost hit it before realizing they were travelling much faster, often this is coming from two directions at once.

No offense to bats, by the way (I'm sure they're more perceptive). When's the last time you heard of one hitting a vehicle?

 

i don't know how some of the old timers can say crashes were higher back in the day.

when i started. i never saw a truck in the ditch. and very rarely saw an accident. but, the technology also didn't exist back then to hear about them all.

today. it's a common occurence. see one in the ditch everywhere. and you have radio to hear about the other side of the country.

back then, werner was the only one running a machine. also, you could do your job as you saw fit. sleep and drive as you wanted. have a sit down meal and be able to park anywhere and not wait so long for a shower.
today, just about everyone is running a machine and we now have a clock we didn't have before. we now have to put in a full days work without the luxory of a nap. and we're hurried because of the clock. (((think how much time we lose, waiting at the desk for a guy to get a shower with his points or what not. a guy getting authorization for fuel. or a cash advance. or do a fax. then throw in the time waiting for a shower.))))

back then, we had truckers, today we have newbies and pigs.

today's trucking generation is younger, stupider, and pressed for time. and the gooberment realizes they're losing people. so now they want to add even younger, more stupider kids. by allowing them to drive at the ripe stupid age of 18.

the gooberment wants to reduce accidents. yet, they do everything in their power to raise the accident rate.

 

This is interesting:

"We found that higher speed limits for cars and trucks contributed to higher fatality rates, but differential speed limits by vehicle type had no significant impact.

Truck-length limitations reduced fatalities in crashes involving large trucks. Our model estimates suggested that if all states had adopted a speed limit of 55 miles per hour for all vehicles in 2005, an additional 561 fatalities would have been averted."

"Further, studies have found that a greater speed difference was associated with a significant increase in fatalities."

Different speed limits for cars vs trucks may cause more fatalities (that would be due to higher relative velocity, like I was talking about a while back for the 25mph zone for trucks in Montana, not that there are necessarily more fatalities there, but crashes would more likely result in a fatality due to that alone).

The catch-22 of this is even when all vehicles have the same speed limit, my maintaining an appropriate following distance, to avoid high velocity collision with what's in front of me, would cause a high velocity collision with what's not required to maintain a following distance behind me, because I can't maintain the speed limit and have a following distance, when vehicles are not required to pass at an appropriate distance, or merge at the speed limit. I think the only way to significantly reduce fatalities, due to speed differences, is to have these regulations be the same for all vehicles, above and beyond the speed limit.

"Our results suggest that states can reduce traffic fatalities from crashes involving large trucks by lowering speed limits for all drivers and that setting lower limits for trucks than for cars will not mitigate the safety effects. Overall, higher speed limits for all vehicles appeared to be a major factor in the fatality rate from crashes involving large trucks, and a speed-limit difference between cars and trucks was not a significant issue. Research has shown that differences in actual speeds are often smaller than differences in posted speeds, which may explain this finding of nonsignificance."

They didn't factor in following distance, so when trucks adhere to that regulation, the differences in posted speeds, relative to that, are much larger, in my experience. There's an equally significant difference between analyzing stats and driving a truck to see what's going on around it.

 

This is interesting too:

"This paper analyzes the effects of light trucks on traffic fatalities by combining state-level and accident-level data sets. The results suggest that a one percentage point increase in the light truck share of the vehicle fleet increases annual traffic fatalities by approximately 0.34 percent, or 143 deaths per year. Of these deaths, approximately one-fifth accrue to the occupants of the new light trucks, while the remaining four-fifths accrue to the occupants of other vehicles, pedestrians, and pedalcyclists. Light trucks therefore pose a significant cost to other users of the highway system, but do not appear to provide any additional protection to their own occupants.

Interpreted on a larger scale, the results suggest that the 21 percentage point increase in light truck share from 1981 to 2004 currently results in as many as 2,900 additional traffic fatalities per year. This estimate may partially explain why, despite advances in safety technology, the annual number of traffic fatalities in the United States has increased by over 10 percent from 1992 to 2005, rising from 39,250 to 43,200."

So, light trucks are deathtraps, and all these people buying SUVs for safety are only obstructing others' view.

 

This too:

"Driving simulators can be used to evaluate driving performance under controlled, safe conditions. Teen drivers are at particular risk for motor vehicle crashes and simulated driving can provide important information on performance. We developed a new simulator protocol, the Simulated Driving Assessment (SDA), with the goal of providing a new tool for driver assessment and a common outcome measure for evaluation of training programs. As an initial effort to examine the validity of the SDA to differentiate performance according to experience, this analysis compared driving behaviors and crashes between novice teens (n=20) and experienced adults (n=17) on a high fidelity simulator for one common crash scenario, a rear-end crash. We examined headway time and crashes during a lead truck with sudden braking event in our SDA. We found that 35% of the novice teens crashed and none of the experienced adults crashed in this lead truck braking event; 50% of the teens versus 25% of the adults had a headway time <3 seconds at the time of truck braking. Among the 10 teens with <3 seconds headway time, 70% crashed. Among all participants with a headway time of 2–3 seconds, further investigation revealed descriptive differences in throttle position and brake pedal force when comparing teens who crashed, teens who did not crash and adults (none of whom crashed). Even with a relatively small sample, we found statistically significant differences in headway time for adults and teens, providing preliminary construct validation for our new SDA."

I think they need to simulate 1/2 second, at most, headway time there, not enough adults are crashing, something's wrong...

 

Word on the street DEF cookers are causing fires after truck accidents.

 

The Russians are a menace.. I can spot the Adidas 1/2 a mile away now, usually accompanied by going 80 or driving a fedwrex truck....