People Are Dumb

Yes. Yes they are.

 

who? Us?

 

That first one, dang, every time I see one of these I start pushing on an imaginary brake with my right foot because of all the brake lights ahead. That driver did not need to be involved in the pileup, and wouldn't have been if he had slowed down and left a little more space.

The second driver didn't seem to slow down much either before he got to where the idiot lady was cavorting out on the road. That's what I always get from these videos: slow down when you see idiots ahead of you. Yes, that means you'll be slowing down a lot.

 

Well first blue truck wasn't exactly tailgating or anything, the more space you leave the more numbnutz cut in front of you next thing you know your almost needing to throw it into reverse to leave more space.

 

Truck driver clearly at fault he did not need to be on the road when those cars were trying to get somewhere

 

There is a limit to the amount of cars that can force their way out in front - They have to have enough of an opening in the adjacent lane to get out in front, some of them at least try to keep some semblance of a following distance, that lane opens into two lanes once they get there, and they often are tripping over each other to get into the packed lane so they can pass.

But there's a catch to it: Naively obeying what the CDL exam says about following distance results in a lot of dangerous situations. [At least in my experience] People generally do what they think they can get away with and the law doesn't pay much attention to tailgating and unsafe lane changes, so if all you do is safe following distance, you'll get a lot of near-misses from people who box themselves in beside you. But, if you prevent other drivers from getting boxed in and keep gap wide open (by yielding to everything that either isn't moving along at a reasonable speed or that doesn't have anywhere to go once they catch up with your tractor), you should be able to get by with very few near-misses and a very consistant speed (match the approximate speed of the gap, not the speed of whoever just intruded, and only worry about speeding up while you are in the clear space between packs of cars).

Not being constantly one minor mistake from disaster with potential for a thorough inspection and a round of the blame-the-trucker game and having a passive/reflexive collision avoidance does make the job a lot less stressful (particularly if you do not have the flexibility to drive at night or route around major cities). Also, if you buy your own fuel, get paid by the hour, or you work for a company which is reasonably generous about bonuses for safety and efficiency, then managing troublemakers properly can come with other benefits than just reduced liability and stress.

 

Well, thank goodness there was a dashcam of said incident. Pretty sure one of those lawyers aka "The Hammer" was going to sue the big nasty truck, and client already had a neck brace on before video surfaced.

 

The video works against the dash cammer and makes any lawsuit against the driver and/or company much simpler. There is a big mess of lights that is the traffic jam is visible at least 26 seconds before the collision. I would say it was visible earlier, but the 26 seconds is only as far back as the youtube video goes. The likely collision becomes apparent 6-8 seconds prior to the truck impacting when the white car failed to respond -- either to the blue car ahead braking or to the presence of stopped/jammed traffic ahead. The video also shows the dash cammer maintaining only about 2 seconds of following distance and only reacting to the collision and thus having only one extra second [over his following distance] in which to try to brake to zero (rather than paying attention and stopping in time)

 

Ok not to go all Smith System on you but you can let dozens of cars cut in front of you and only lose 15 to 30 seconds to your destination. As Assured said above, there's a way to drive that will minimize the number of numbnutz cutting you off and brake checking you that may not be exactly Smith System but still good common sense. Tailgating is always a mistake, though, even if you don't end up hitting someone.