I had an epiphany about backing up a tractor-trailer on a city street

I heard the driver of the yellow car got his CDL and now drives a green semi truck.

 

Hope he never has to close his doors on an uneven lot!

 

Or pickup a trailer with a bent rim and leaking wheel seal left by the previous driver.

 

I thought y'all had gone too far, then I realized...

 

Idk, usually his threads get shut down by now.

 

I remember learning that lesson either watching people drive before I drove or from spoken/written instruction. I've been accused of being/thinking I'm a know-it-all before, and of course I'm not. What I know about anything I learned is because 1) I knew I DIDN'T know the answer and 2) the answer is waiting for me to find it, 3) so I went looking for it and/or found someone who "lives and dies" by being correct on that issue and learned their process or the key steps they focus on to achieve their professional-level of results. I don't care what a fisherman thinks about engineering and I don't care what an engineer thinks about fishing, in most cases. The more you learn the easier it is to learn and there are lessons you learn on one topic that are very similar to one on another topic. I had a too-short career in aviation and expected to spend my life in it. I brought those tools, techniques, etc into everything I did after leaving it, for better or worse. Aviation, IMO, can teach every industry a lot about how to implement very high safety procedures and still "get things done." Safety needs to be built into procedures from the start. Safety isn't a magic sweater you can throw on a dangerous process.

Pilots call being aware are your surroundings, everything you can possibly know, Situational Awareness. In trucking this means keeping track of the vehicles on all sides, not just ignoring everything except what is outside the windshield until you need to know about the Left, Right, Behind quadrants and you then look at them for a snapshot. You want to have awareness of all quadrants and anticipate the actions likely to be next from those quadrants. This anticipation is called "staying ahead of the airplane/truck." Your mind should know long before you do something what you will do if that car does this, or not, and that SUV does that, or not, etc.

The motorcycle question is just a version of the car question, so 99% of the motorcycle answer is answered by answering the car question. If you really want to be safe, act as if the motorcycle is behind you every time. I used to drive as if the cops and the boss were watching me, except for some human moments I'm not proud of, but got away with, and didn't make them habits.

It's easy to tell if someone is trying to improve or trying to prove they are right. Being alone and working alone creates or exaggerates A LOT of the "prove they are right". Add trucking and online and it's maybe the most common behavior, beside typos. Does this question really need another 12 pages of replies? Let's say you correct every person in the thread and we all agree, eventually, you did everything correctly and you should be in charge of every CDL school. Then what? 12 more pages of explanations and "corrections"? I'm done with this thread.

 

Alpha 88 was going to shut it down until he seen how much fun everybody was having at the OP’s expense

 

I’m guessing you missed my point of calculating prior to your stopping point if you or he can make the turn or not.

remember defensive driving isn’t “oh crap should I back up now or not?” it’s “oh crap I need to add this guys turn in the equation now before I get there.”

just like many here who stop well before the line in a 4 wheeler knowing full well the truck on the right turn lane isn’t going to make it if they stop at the line.


that’s all.