Out of Control Semi Slams Into Several Others Saturday on I-5 South of Ashland

Help me out here. Myself NOT being a truckdriver...what should he have done differently?

Seems to me, if you lose your brakes, you would lose control going downhill and it's not your *fault* if involved in an accident, and charging him with careless driving just seems...bizarre. Should he have run the truck off the road instead? I ask because I do not know.

?????

 

It might be a case of the driver did not proceed down the hill properly. Those hills are fairly steep. You should go down slowly and he may have been in too high a gear. This is just my thoughts.

 

Even though I haven't driven a semi...I'm assuming (uh oh) the same 'downshifting' that one would do in a 4 wheeler would somewhat work with a semi that lost breaks....but wouldn't the weight itself, combined with gravity, still speed up the truck?

 

Yes it does. If you go down too fast and have to use the brakes alot, they can fail due to the over heating. That is one of the reasons that trucks go down slowly.

 

What should have he done? Considering he got cited for careless driving, one assumes he lost his brakes not due to a line blowing out or failed air compressor or whatever, one assumes he was going TOO FAST down the hill.
Making a lot of assumptions, I'll further assume the thing had some kind of engine brake. Therefore, assuming correctly, he simply started off that hill in the wrong gear, going to fast, relying too heavily on the brakes. He should have started off slower, in a lower gear, and just factored in that that hill is going to take a while to get to the bottom of it.

I would also assume this is probably a newer truck driver, as most veteran drivers have "been there, done that" in starting off too fast and having plumes of smoke coming from the brakes that have been so overheated, it takes a LONG time for them to cool back down again. Unfortunately for this guy, he learned the totally HARD way instead of just smoking out the brakes.

 

It's assumed that since you are a professional driver, you should know better. Your brakes fail on a hill, and it's too much hill for you to control your speed, you will be cited. Doesn't matter whether it's equipment failure or negligence. BTW, you don't ever downshift on a steep hill... you miss the gear and your goose is cooked.

I've been on those hills as well, going down in 8th gear using the transmission and jake to keep me under control. The "SuperTruckers" go blasting by me all the time - that's the chance they're taking with their CDLs, equipment, and everybody's lives. What if the vehicles in front of this guy had been a couple of SUVs full of kids?

Ironpony

 

speed up, you might actually see the transmission in your mirror a half mile behind you. Big trucks have to match the transmission with the road speed. Cars do too...have you ever driven a stick and downshifted when you were going "too" fast? The engine sounds like it's being tortured by a ruthless sadomastic lunatic . And your transmission just wants to get the hell outta there before it gets the whip !!

 

There is an escape ramp that he probably could have took. My guess is like everyone else's, he just went down too fast and that he thought he could ride it out and everything would be peachy keen at the bottom