A safe truckers most important skill.

i think sa comes with expieriance, noticing what people are doing around you and predicting how it will affect your safe operating space. the easiest one for me to tell is when a vehicle passes me, i see signs that display thier intentions long before they use signals. i think for drivers to better thease skills is always keep a safe operating distance and use the smith system of driving. i have always used the process of elimination when evaluating hazards, noticing others merging into the lanes around or into your lane and eliminating the ones that pose a threat and the ones that dont , then focussing mostly on the ones that are in my safe zone. then i always keep my attention for escape areas in case i need to avoid a situation. i see so many drivers driving way to fast in road construction areas that have barricades on both sides with no shoulder or escape route. reading traffic ahead of you and predicting how things may unfold is a skill that comes with expieriance. happy trails

 

i can agree with you layton and this skilled isnt just reserved to semi driving as it can be honed in as a 4 wheel driver as well. this is a more so needed trait with truck drivers or other professional drivers. SA can be trained but not all who train do so and not all that are trained will grasp this concept right away or at all.

 

situational awareness is needed in everything in life
it starts with common sense
sorely lacking in most people these days
i'm not sure how some people survive until the next day

 

and they walk, type among us

 

reposted below

 

i believe in the old days [ like 1970's] they called this defensive driving. but i think its more than that , something only time and expieriance can teach. i agree totaly that the guys coming out of school while having good intentions can only grasp the concept but not be able to fully understand sa untill they get some miles behing them. some will be fortunate to be able to team with a good veteran but others are pretty much thrown to the wolves, in which could make a very short career for them. i believe in the esp and a gaurdian angel because some thing has kept me aware and safe for all thease years. motorcycle riding teaches defensive driving, snowmobiling will hone your icy road skills. happy trails

 

Plenty of old timers started out as a teenager, handed the keys and told "deliver this load to New York" and fared well. They realized they were operating industrial machinery and not race cars.

 

At a given point, information overload becomes THE deciding factor in whether or not vehicles are going to trade paint.

Three things, I think, made me a better driver than my only one year behind the wheel of a tractor should merit (Please note, I have had three evaluators tell me they thought I had 10 or more years driving-- this is not just me blowing my own horn. But for the purposes of this post, it had to be said and so I said it. Trust me, I make up for it by being a total space-case in other places in my life!). The first was 8 years cooking professionally. They say that line cooks are all crazy, maybe they're right. But working a dinner rush in a busy restaurant means living your working life in a state of crisis, and being able to use your skillset under the clock, under the gun, when there is absolute chaos all around you and bringing the swirling maelstrom to a slow dance in your brain. Being able to glance at a board full of orders and pick out the things that YOU need to know and then execute immediately and skillfully. Being able to ignore the superfluous. And knowing what to pay attention to and what not.

The second thing was working as a Mississippi River towboat deckhand for another 8 years. I learned in a very intuitive way what momentum is, and does, and means. 1500 tons at 6 miles an hour will walk right through just about anything until it bloody well decides to stop. The environment was trying to kill me, the weather was trying to bake or soak me, the office just plain didn't care, and everything I picked up weighed about a hundred pounds. There was a much higher than normal chance of getting killed by any of several ways every time I got out of the car in the morning-- statistically, my commute to and from work was about the safest part of my workday, which should tell you something.

Thing 3 was that, through all of this, I was and am a dedicated urban bicyclist. Yeah, one a them guys we all love to hate. You want situational awareness? You think you're good at it? Go be a bike messenger in Chicago for 3 years. You learn to just kinda feel what the traffic is doing. You could feel it in the mornings, whether it was going to be a good day or a bad one, on the ride into work. It's nothing I can explain but any courier would tell you the same thing.

I dunno. I can certainly say that it pays to keep your head outta yer butt, but that's true of a lot of things.