Truck Technology

Well... now you’re just bragging.
BTW, nice profile pic. Know her?

 

With the right mirrors, enough of them and attention from me the driver, there is NO blind spot.

With that said, I have no time to fuss with alarms saying there is a lane out, vehicle in blocking or whatever. chances are I already know that. I took out three vehicles in situations where those alarms would have been a nuisance and not a benefit to me. It is such a tiny bump to cause a regular car to come across your bumper or under the trailer.

Call me stubborn, but the more crap they put into the tractor trailers, the more I push back. In short do you want a professional driver who is actively wrestling with traffic or do you want a steering wheel holder pushing buttons to quiet the alarms? And then document to safety each and everyone? //sarcam.

There ARE however. certain technologies I find very good for big trucks. Usually related to vision and docking etc. Even security when you are loaded with a million in narcotics and Miss Preety is knocking on your passenger door lower window. You can check and be sure that Pretty does not have thuggies or other problems. Or even transmit that encounter to a off site capture in your company to have them ready for a potential law enforcement issue should miss Preety want in by busting a window.

So that's me. Dr Jekyll and Hyde. I don't mind a little of this and that. But I do mind those that nanny the driver to death with excessive overload.

One thing. 12th commandment. There will be three seperate cars inside all three of the standard west coast mirror blind spots at all times.

Those are the cars that have a death wish hanging around a semi. It's stupid of them. Tragic I say.

 

actress, Annasophia Robb

nope, don;t know her........i know "of her".....

 

I've never used any blind spot detectors but it seems to me that every time a vehicle gets beside you it would make noise or do whatever it does. some 4wheelers will make a game out of this.I'd rather have to look a little harder than have them playing games while I'm working.

 

The convex mirrors give a great view of both sides of the truck....I check those mirrors before changing lanes, as well as watching cars coming up beside me.

My wifes SUV has worse blind spots than a truck, so the small orange light on her mirror that warns of a vehicle beside me is very helpful to me.

 

Just went home for a few days of Home Time and was surprised just how little I could see “around” our little Fiat 500L ... forgot how to turn my neck to check blind spots... get back in the Truck and was very happy that I could once again see 360 around my vehicle.

 

Expanding on this, I'll keep it simple. for tractor and trailer; a company would have to mount cameras on all their trailers and wire the monitor into each tractor. Not to say it can never happen but it's a huge expense that most companies won't want to pay. eventually this will be standard equipment but so will food replicators. eventually is an easy way to say "it'll happen but not for awhile".

 

The blind spot in an articulated truck changes as the angle between truck and trailer changes. It is not an impossible problem to solve, but it is by no means easy.

For example:
If you have a blind spot detector set up for straight line operation, it also needs to avoid alarming when the truck turns, and the trailer is now in the 'blind spot' of the tractor.

Example 2:

No tractor-mounted blind spot detector will be able to see the blind side of the trailer opposite of the way a truck is turning.

Example 3:

Cameras mounted on the body of a trailer will be regularly scraped off if they are mounted for good sightlines along a trailer. If they are mounted in more protected positions. They will be constantly failing due to frozen slush in the winter, which tends to build up pretty much anywhere that you might try to mount a camera where the camera will have some protection from scrape damage, but still have a useful field of view.

 

Some folks are saying that wiring the trailer and tractor would be a problem. It really wouldn't. We already have a heavy multi-conductor cable connecting truck and trailer. It would be easy to add an extra couple wires into the pigtails for data connections between truck and trailer.

How long it would take for the industry to decide on the new standard connections and wire positions is another problem entirely.