Tailgating the general public at high speeds

I'll do it in a heartbeat.....maybe I'll get flamed for saying this , but an idiot trucker that is tail-gating another vehicle is just a nano-second away from a potentially fatal accident. This practice has been around since the very beginning like Chinatown said , and will always be around sad to say , but.....if I witness it , at the 1st available chance , I'm getting company names , unit & tag #'s if possible , along with the time , place and direction of travel. Then I'm calling the company and asking to speak with someone in safety. I give them my name and phone # then tell them what I witnessed their employee doing.....some folks may say that dropping a dime on a fellow driver is wrong....opinions vary I guess , But I'll turn one in for tailgating just as fast as I would turn one in for drinking and driving....the way I see this , maybe I'll save a life or 12.....

 

Tailgating a car in a truck is a big ticket and a big CSA hit.
Also cars are warned not to pass trucks and dive right back in front of them
creating a dangerous situation,cops see this they give the car driver a ticket.

 

This reminds me of a billboard I saw last week.

It said, "Have you been involved in a truck wreck? You deserve to be paid. Call us at 800-xxx-xxxx."

Really? So, even if the truck driver did nothing wrong? These lawyers should be tarred and feathered...right before they're burned at the stake.

 

[QUOTE="semi" retired;4233136]That's because the moron being passed is too lazy to shut the speed control off and let the other truck pass, and should be hung by their gonads for doing so.[/QUOTE]

This. I drive a 62 MPH governed truck. If a 63 MPH truck is passing me, I drop back once his front bumper passes mine.

My biggest pet peeve is with the drivers rolling 60 that speed up once they see the company logo on the side of my truck, then slow back down to 60 once I get behind them.

Close behind are the other 62 MPH drivers that don't let me back in after I've moved to allow them to merge onto the highway.

 

Hi Ms, most people aren't aware of governed trucks, and now I see companies are starting to put stickers on their trucks, "This truck is governed at 62 mph". They see some large car blow their doors off, and think all trucks can do that. BTW, best way to come back over if a car won't let you back, engage turn signal, and slowly come back over, they'll get the message, although, they'll probably call your company because they think you are cutting them off. Morons.
BTW, has anybody proven the myth, that if you pump the throttle 3 times on a governed truck, it disables the governor for a while?

 

I have called more than once. If I do not have a phone #, I wait till I get on my computer, look the company up on line, and ask for the safety or traffic manager. I explain the time and aggression, truck and trailer # if I can, and tell them if they do not want to deal with a fatal, and they will, they had better get that driver out of the seat immediately. They have seemed very concerned, but whether or not they do anything, I do not know. Laws suits today will destroy a lot of companies.

We all should call, because what if we found out later a family, or someone in our own family, was killed by this driver and we did nothing about it to stop a maniac that has no business being behind the wheel of a 80,000 lb. commercial vehicle...I do not want to live with knowing I had a chance to get him off the road, and looked the other way......

Also, if this aggression does not stop, every trucker will be driving in the right lane, single file at 62 mph like in other parts of the world, and there will be no tailgating.....huge fine.

Get involved.....

 

It's a simple matter of numbers. The more vehicles you put onto roads every year, the more congested things become. The more things become more congested, the less distance between vehicles there can be. As drivers become accustomed to this, they begin to accept this as normal driving behavior. It's not going to get better. You'll either need to learn to deal with it or get a different job.

 

Actually, as others have stated, this has been going on for years, and while calling the company may make your conscience feel better, we don't know if the company actually does anything about it, as they are already strapped for drivers. Sadly, the only thing left is these distance monitoring systems that literally take over when the driver is too stupid (or preoccupied) to do so, and I think that's terrible, that this is what it has come to, like cars that parallel park themselves, come on.

 

[QUOTE="semi" retired;4233402]Actually, as others have stated, this has been going on for years, and while calling the company may make your conscience feel better, we don't know if the company actually does anything about it, as they are already strapped for drivers. Sadly, the only thing left is these distance monitoring systems that literally take over when the driver is too stupid (or preoccupied) to do so, and I think that's terrible, that this is what it has come to, like cars that parallel park themselves, come on.[/QUOTE]

Hate to disagree with you semi..., but the company I retired from fired a driver with over 20 years in with them for this very thing. Safety received a call from another trucker that was being "pushed" by ours. They fired that hand immediately.....no questions , no explanations , just fired him. The other driver had his truck # the time , and place. One reason I always brag about how good a place to work GSF was.....hard to get hired on....and also hard to get fired from , unless you attempted something as stupid as tailgating while pulling a 45 ft billboard....if more companies would take a zero tolerance position like that , it might slow some of the idiocy down a bit. I never could understand why anyone would run so close behind another vehicle......it begs for an accident.

 

Wow, to say that traffic is too thick today, so one must be 2 feet off a 4 wheelers bumper with aggression, is more than I hoped I would ever here from so called professionals. This industry is on a very slippery slope..... They maintain seperation in heavy traffic around the world, and the freight gets delivered just fine.