Who caused this collision? With Poll

part of it has to do with predictability. its like racing wheel to wheel on a road coarse race track if overcook it coming into a corner and are going to spin out, your supposed to lock your breaks down, the main reason for that isn't so you stop, we all know a skidding tire will slow you down less than trying to find some grip. but when you lock the tires down as your spinning off a corner your going to go in a straight predictable path (even if your spinning). gives the other cars on the track a better chance of not smashing into you at 100 mph. if your trying to find grip your cars goings to be bobing and weaving/fishtailing in a unpredictable manner to the traffic behind you.

your coming down a merge lane and your timing is going to meet with another vehicle your going to lift out of it cause your not expecting them to slow down, if they slow down now your both slowing down. now if i was the driver of the camera truck i would have lifted out of it once the other truck started trying to pass me but not before.

this is probably what pissed the other truck off and made him decide to try to ram rod it threw using the shoulder (an even even worse choice.)

camera truck defiantly could have done a far better job on his end. if i was the camera trucks company i would probably call that preventable/not at fault.

 

Hi Mack, that's true. A long time ago, a driver who was training me on my 1st dump truck, saw I was apprehensive in certain situations, and said to me, "Son? If you are going to drive these things, you are going to have to be more aggressive, or you'll sit here all day". In situations like this, common sense should dictate, and someone has to give, law or not. It's how traffic USED to mesh smoothly. Here, you have 2 drivers that don't know what to do, and finally, the merging truck was too far forward to abort, and the camera truck gave them a false message, by slowing up some, but not enough to let them in. You know, in my younger, aggressive years, I might have done the same thing to the camera truck.

 

My thoughts exactly, and I voted thusly.
Prime flatbed looked like he freaked out and didn't know how to handle it (doesn't surprise me)---but merging traffic is required by law to adjust their speed to merge.....they are NOT "entitled" to a spot on the through-way.

 

All you folks missed the real culprit here! IT'S ASPHAULT! OK, I'll go back to my hidey hole now...

 

Bottom line: It is the responsibity of the merging vehicle to yield ROW to traffic on the highway. The merging truck is clearly at fault.

 

As a professional driver be the predictable one.

You use your turn signals to signal your intent. You ALSO use your speed to signal your intent.

The Prime driver could have either:

Got on the throttle to signal to the merging truck that they were intending to get ahead.

Or... SLOWED to be at or below the speed of merging traffic BEHIND them.

Instead the Prime did neither and employed a confusing series of actions that had not only made sure the other driver didn't know his intent, but made sure he would maximize the chance of contact. I don't see any turn signal in any of the video angles from the Prime truck. He should have had turn signals on early to alert drivers in the next lane he wants to get over.

Bottom line, plastic mirror, no harm no foul. Second bottom line, BOTH drivers seem to be challenged to maintain lane control.

 

I found the highway this occurred in video. Took me a little while with the blurry background exit signs

Waco Texas. I-35 N

Merging truck coming from west traveling eastbound off of hwy 340 (Route 6). Merging onto to I 35 N. Speed limit there 75

Merging Truck by rule is totally at blame but seeing that he had a very long on-ramp and a pretty good view of I 35. He certainly had time to adjust his speed and pick his spot and slide on in.....

If Prime is going 62 and the speed limit is 75, then he certainly should not be hanging out in the middle lane in general. At 62 he's way too slow to be there.. also with the cars around him going that fast (75) to 80? If I were a 62 mph truck I would be afraid to kinda move over unless I really really had to.....but the other truck had plenty of On-ramp and view of traffic that how he got himself right next to another tractor trailer was plain stupid....Prime probably saw the van driver having like a 1/2 mile to make his merge decision that he figured he was safe to remain where he was. And I agree with that!

Short ramps. Very little time. Traffic sees you at the last second and is mostly paralyzed to do much to help you.... So the merging truck just has to stop if it has to.....yea it sucks ...and it's just the luck of the draw...

But with the fantastic sight lines and a long on-ramp....it's the van driver who screwed up royally and 100% of the blame is on him..... never ever should he have been right alongside Prime...he either grossly misjudged it or he didn't care or wasn't paying attention.....

I would give anything to have that kind of time, distance and view on my merges up in the congested northeast region

 

I went ahead and blamed Swift. Surely they were in the area and caused some shift in the gravitational polarity of the earths crust.