Defensive driving 101

Cutting the wheel is a reflex of a 4 wheeler, not a truck driver. Not to mention that looked like an end dump which puts the center of gravity fairly high off the ground.

Although the last thing I want to do is kill someone with a truck, I am also not going to lose sleep over the Darwin Award recipient.

 

Dash cam versus Mr Darwin setting up a bad situation in front would be the heart of the situation. He gets hit first. Not the innocents.

I cannot tell you how many times Darwins stopped in front of me setting up for the classic insurance scam smash with a full car. When I see them sneaking and eyeballing me Im already ahead of them mentally setting up the truck for one of two choices. The last one tried me in a VW Rabbit or Omni type car on the Cross Bronx 95 near the Whitestone interchange in the rain his mistake was two, it was raining and no one was around and I had ABS to use. My FFE Shop yelled but no one touched a #### thing. (There is a sensor that measures extreme stops or impacts and transmits over QC instantly with revelant data location etc)

That was a real world use of ABS, knocked her down from 65 to 20 and danced around the car on full ABS with the wheels still turning, applied power dissappeared into the GW approaches where it slowly goes to two lanes ready for further battle planning on the brick walls etc. I was planning to use either the trailer tires or the drives to shove him into the curbed embankments at the base of the walls and let that tip him out of continiuing to stalk me.

 

####

 

Too many commercial that say get hit by a tractor trailer and I'll make diamonds come out. I got so AND SO a million dollars. Call me if you get hit by a tractor. In Dallas, care pull on the on ramp going 80 then slow to 30 in front of tractors. Unbelievable

 

Truckers must pay attention at all times. There are too many commercial that say get hit by a tractor trailer and I'll make diamonds come out. He risked his life and other innocent lives. Worst case for me would have been the person that breaked checked would have got hit.

 

The Russian judge gives him full marks for his dedication and control in not losing the phone through it all!

To echo your comments Triple6, I watched a bunch of dashcam wreck videos on YouTube a few months ago, and one thing that I noticed throughout was that very often the trucks that tried to avoid the collisions, ended up jackknifing or flipping, and then sliding out of control into other vehicles, or onto the sidewalk, or taking out power poles dropping live wires down over the road and sidewalk.

One I still can see in memory (I think it was from the intersection traffic camera), a large 4 way intersection, probably 4 lanes north/south side, 2 east/West, green light going southbound, 2 trucks headed south at speed limit.
A car either was going southbound and stopped in the intersection to make a last minute turn, or ran the light and then stopped. In any case, it ended up with a car in the slow lane directly in front of the front truck.
He slams on the brakes, and slows down rapidly, then just before he gets to the car, he swerves to the left, gets around the car, but is headed for the center divide and so swerves back to right, flipping the semi, now sliding onto the sidewalk, peds running to get out of the way, takes out a couple of power poles dropping the wires down over the sidewalk and the cars in the intersection, and knocking some street lights down to crash on the sidewalk.
The truck behind him then jackknifes, and I think slides into the end of the center divide, or the poles/signals in the center.
Then Mr Darwin drives away unscathed.

I saw many examples of how trying to avoid an accident caused much worse accidents or risks to others, but that one video really brought it home to me how extensive losing control of one of our monsters can do, and how maintaining control is much more important than avoiding an accident.
If you can do both, maintain control and thus avoid the accident, even better!

I have a dash cam, and soon plan to upgrade to a better one, and will put the current one watching the right side and mirror or something, so if the accident is not my fault, I can show that I did what I had to do to maintain control and thus avoid further risk to all, and even if it is my fault, I want it to show that I still did a good job staying in control! Lol

In that video, I saw that if he had slowed down as much as he could, and steered just a little, to kinda aim at the corner of the car, instead of dead center, he wouldn't have hit the car that hard, and the guy behind him would have been able to stop in time, or had room to go to the next lane to escape, and the wreck would be pretty minor.

So I say to go watch some of those videos, and ingrain it in your brain to put maintaining control as top priority.

Think of this:
You are driving in a busy area, and all of a sudden a little old lady, or a kid, runs out in front of you.
You are going to slam on the brakes and swerve hard, because you can't hit them, right??
What about the bus full of 80 kids next to you, or the crowded sidewalk on the other side of the road at the Farmers Market? Or the chemical tanker coming the other way, in front of the high school?
What will your actions do to the rest of the world, as you tunnel vision on the little old lady in front of you...

I was in a similar situation once, except it was my life on the line.
Driving a loaded 10 wheeler dump truck towing a large empty tilt bed flat bed trailer on a busy but fast 280 freeway just coming into South San Francisco.
A pickup a lane over and in front of me had a stack of particle board on the lumber rack, with 2 straps over it.
The front edge of the top sheet started lifting in the wind, flapped a couple of times, then broke off a 3rd of the way back at the strap....
I saw it all happen, and watched it like a leaf on the wind, whip over into my lane, headed straight for me (or rather, it stopped, and I was headed straight for it).
I glanced, and I had a school bus about half way past the back corner of my trailer on my right side that had just gotten on the freeway, and it was afternoon, so I could assume it was full.
The road was banked right there, on a curve, and I knew that with a full truck and an empty trailer, if I hit the brakes hard, the trailer was going to try to pass me, which meant it would go down hill, and the bus would catch the corner in the side, probably knocking the bus out of control.
So I had no where to go, and couldn't slow down by much before I got to it.
So I concentrated on staying in my lane, as a 4 foot by 3 foot by 7/8 inch thick piece of wood came through my windshield.
It would have taken my head off, quite literally, but it flipped to be semi vertical just as it hit, so it wedged between the top and bottom of the windshield frame, instead of passing unhindered through to me.
When safety glass is broken at high speed like that, it creates millions of tiny needles of glass from between each small piece, and they were aimed at me, along with the bigger chunks.
I had just put my sunglasses on literally a couple of minutes before as the fog cleared and the sun got bright, and they protected my eyes from the needles so I could still see, so I was able to stay in my lane, and slow down and merge over safely until I got to a place to stop.

I took pictures before I moved in the seat, and I was totally covered and stuck with glass, as was every surface in the truck. I still have tote with the contents of the truck that day, that I haven't deglassed... Lol

I am sure I could have avoided the board, but I probably would have caused much more carnage if I had tried.
(and yes, I had plenty of following distance in my lane, since I knew about the jackknifing risk, but this came from the other faster lane, and was not anticipated)

Maintain control!

 

If I had continued to roll at the time of impact I could have technically been 50% liable so sometimes the best defense is coming to a complete stop and setting the parking brake before the impact so that liability falls 100% on the other person

 

Real safety glasses breaks into pieces without sharp edges, dunno where you got the splinter thing from


I love my phone, but I leave it in the sleeper. I have a headset I can shuffle my music with, or turn on my audio books. I keep it in the sleeper to remove temptation .

 

It was a end dump I believe that was a soil tech truck... might be wrong but I believe that's what it was. I used to live down in that area Did the same type of work for a very short period Of time for a different company. I have not seen a soil Tech driver yet that didn't drive like a raving maniac I watched one one day intentionally Run 3 red lights back to back. Just slowed down and rolled through them. All them aggregate haulers down there drive like idiots,every single one of them. Because they drive by the load / ton and try to get as much done in a day as they can which causes them to have to run like maniacs and endanger other people's lives

 

Just Wanted to add, since it was alluded to, that He also did not have an escape plan while the situation was developing. Very Important to keep those in mind especially if there is potential for emergencies like that. Heck I plan escape routes in my four wheeler especially on the highway because I know how a lot of these idiots drive. Being aware of your surroundings and the situation at hand is very important.

While I've yet to move a truck even an inch in my life I ran into a situation last night where a light in a 55 mph zone turned yellow on me. Of course I was at that sweet spot distance where you aren't 100% sure you have enough stopping distance. About a second into it I knew, instinctively, that there is no way I'd get a big truck to stop in time. So I started looking for cross traffic, which wasn't there, in case I needed to blow the light. In the end I was able to stop my car without locking em up but was still thinking to myself, "At least I had an open lane to my left and no cross traffic to slip by if I needed it.

Maybe I'm wired differently. Maybe the Military's campaign for attention to detail stuck with me harder than I thought. Who knows? Just stay safe out there drivers and stay AWARE.