Is the safety policy for this company an over kill?

Depends on the truck settings and camera settings. I worked at a company that was 68 cruise and 65 pedal, but you can set cruise and hold the pedal to override the absurd following distance on the Cascadia I was in. Yeah, that following distance is safest, but pulling out 500 feet behind someone in Nebraska where traffic is going 80 is just obnoxious. Usually the cameras are set to auto alert and record for safety if following less than 1-2 seconds behind for an extended period, but every company is different, so don’t quote me.

As far as 70 downhill, it’s not bad. 70 is easy to maintain downhill and anything steep will have a truck speed limit of 55 or less. The momentum doesn’t really help anyways, because the ECM isn’t going to let the truck do anything until it gets back down to it’s governed speed, so even if you bomb a hill at 75-80mph, all you’re doing is adding an extra second or two before it drops back to down to 65 and actually does anything. The plastic fleet trucks like most of us drive feel sketchy around 75mph anyways

 

The job was a lot less stressful when I was in a 63mph truck, honestly. If a truck is governed, I think 66-67mph is the worst because then you have to deal with every mega carrier running 65mph. At 63, I’d maybe only have to deal with the drag racing a couple times a day. Ungoverned is best obviously, but slow governors are definitely decent sometimes.

 

I 100 percent agree. My stress level definitely goes down when I cut the cruise down. Sometimes, a driver has to make a situational call based on what the traffic is doing. Governed or ungoverned