Emergency Runaway Ramps and Mandatory Brake Check Areas.

The best the OP can hope for is to gather summits with MANDATORY brake check stop signage from forum users. Otherwise, if he really wants to do this, he can get on google earth and get the lat/lon's himself of the runaway ramps much easier then drivers with no real interest can.

Just the notation that runaway ramp(s) are there on a given grade should get onlookers to give the hill added respect if they have no experience with it. I see no need to know exactly where they are. I just spent most of this afternoon on Wolf Creek Pass doing some photography work and I can tell you there are runaway ramps and the vehicles that have brake issues (could smell them every now and then) are the older motor homes that probably have the same brake pads it had when it left the builder 20 years ago and/or are driven like they're in their family car and have no real understanding for what 7%/7 miles means.

 

maybe dot outta stop concentrating on safety and communicating between cars and to stop having trucks slam on their brakes just because and start making mandatory jakes for motorhomes.

 

I wish there were some stats to see how often escape ramps were used, and by whom. I suspect older motor homes, driven by drivers with little understanding of weight/gravity/distance, and loaded down with a lot of trinkets, food, belongings, and water would make up the larger percentage ... Yet they go about their merry little way with little to no safety enforcement or monitoring.

 

http://www.crashforensics.com/mountaingradecrashes.cfm

 

That's some good info right there. Every driver, new and old, should be required to read through that site, especially the general info regarding brakes and steep descents.

 

pretty lengthy artcle based entirely on heat alone and not really addressing the other issues.

makes very little mention of poor drum surface and proper slack adjustment. which can make a very big deal with the heat factor.

drums with a perfectly round circumference and brakes that are properly adjusted will do wonders for proper braking. without the heat factor kicking in as much as it's talked about in the article.

unfortunately, machined drums aren't a consideration in the trucking industry.

i drove a truck last year, with one of them O/O companies. worked decent on dry ground with a trailer. but drop the trailer and she was pretty tough to stop. sucked on rain. thank goodness i didn't stay in it for winter time. the abs spent more time releasing the brakes then applying the brakes. my guess would be the drums completely warped.

 

Back to the OP - Mandatory brake check stop at the top of Black Mountain on I40 EB in North Carolina. IIRC it is about mm 65. There are several runoffs but I have no idea on the mile markers. Bottom of the hill is about mm 70.

 

seems kind of pointless to me for the runaway truck ramps. If you're in "NEED" of an emergency runaway ramp, you're not gonna have time to be pushing buttons on a gps to bring the nearest one up, you're gonna be fighting to control the truck and keep from hitting innocent 4-wheelers (not usually innocent, but in this case they would be) and hurting or killing someone.

as for the brake check areas, I would check each state's DOT websites. You could also make POI's for chain stations. that would be helpful.