Mobileye

If you are talking about getting tripped up with "hard braking events", then I understand. My word of wisdom in this regard is that if you are having HBE's, then you are definitely following too close to the vehicle in front.

It may be that you may feel you have a safe following distance, but just a little closer than on the open road because you "don't want to get cut off" by passenger vehicles. If so, then a tad bit of attitude adjustment may be in order. Think of it this way, if you open up a LOT of space in front of you and WELCOME four wheelers to USE the space so they can flow from the exit/merging lane to the fast lane and vice versa, then they aren't actually cutting you off. They are accepting your gift.

Now you may argue that if you do that, if you back off and give some space, that you will driver slower from point A to point B. That's true. However, if you are paid by the mile and you are traveling 20 miles in heavy traffic, how many miles did you gain by trying to prevent folks from "cutting you off"? 2 miles? 3 miles? What does that add up to? Half a snack sized bag of Doritos? Putting it in this context then ask yourself the question, "Is that half bag of Doritos worth putting myself and others at risk of an accident that could result in repair claims, injury claims, or even death? Let's face it, as professional truck drivers we are driving "weapons of mass destruction" through traffic that is mostly small vehicles that will suffer tremendous damage if we hit them. Might be worthwhile to put this all in perspective, put on some soothing tunes, back off a bit, and actually you will find that you will drive a more steady and smooth speed, and enjoy the process a bit more.

I can honestly say that in my experience (approaching 250,000 miles) I have yet to have anything remotely approaching a hard braking event, except for a traffic light change once. Nothing like that in heavy traffic. Give space, a lot of space, and keep a steady pace that is a couple miles per hour slower than the rest of traffic and let it flow around you. For Pete's sake don't go sticking your nose up into a cluster of cars and trucks to try and push traffic forward. Hang back and keep your mind active for your "outs", you lanes and means of escape in the event something bad happens in front of you. The biggest and most important "out" should be the space in front of you. At all times.

 

That's a tricky situation, when you have a trucker come in too close in front and need to slow in a bit of a hurry, but rightly so you are also concerned about those that are tailgating you. When I drive in heavy traffic I don't use cruise control (obvious) and engage the jake brake if it starts getting to tight quarters. If I have a heavy load I'll set jake on highest setting, lighter loads I'll have medium or light setting. That way if I back off on the accelerator I have immediate slowing from the jake and can more precisely set my speed to maintain distance in front while not having to apply the brakes.

One thing about the jake, if it really gets slow I don't employ the jake in low gears. If you do that then you get the classic "bucking truck" syndrome.

 

Dude don't sweet it, last week leaving out of Chicago rush hour traffic I was leaving plenty room in front of me when a screwball decided he needed to exit from the far left lane, cutting across 4 lanes of traffic and darn near clipping me across my bumper, safety sent me a message asking about a critical event for hard braking. Told them I hit my brakes because I had too, and explained the situation. This is the second time I've had one of these nonsense critical warnings in the last 18 mo. And both were the same situation.

A critical event beats the hell outta not hitting your brakes and?????
Sent from my RM-845_nam_vzw_100 using Board Express

 

A single HBE isn't that big a deal. What the EOBR's are recording and safety department is reviewing is trends or patterns. If you have several HBE's, then safety will want to review and find out whether your driving habits are consistently getting you into situations that require hard braking. Same thing for side roll events (not sure exactly what they are called) where your trailer tilts more than X degrees in a turn because you took the turn at too high a speed.

On the one hand these EOBR's are a pain in the posterior, on the other hand they are a tool that can help larger carriers identify drivers that are risk for having accidents and reviewing their driving habits.

 

Lepton...are you saying there are yaw sensors on trailers ?

The one in the EOBR is set by the carrier and you have to put it up on 3 wheels to trip it. In fact I did a lil time for one of the lessor fleets awhile back waiting for my LP deal and they didn't have this turned on........

One of their fav drivers took a 10 mph curve at 65 and the EOBR recorded until the battery box was mashed in the roll....but no yaw alert in the data.

JMO

 

Yes, the yaw alert is activated by some carriers. I saw the safety guy at Swift demonstrate the kind of alert he receives. It includes a Google Maps view of the exact location and direction the driver was going, speed, time and date, amount of yaw, load weight and type, etc. They get similar alerts for hard braking events and over speed events.