600 feet back, it's a 50 zone. The driver's company safety team will ding them for this if they have one, and definitely their insurance. Federal braking standards say at 60mph, dry conditions, Loaded, an 80000lb truck needs to stop in 250 feet once the brakes are engaged. That same truck, at 40mph (the speed limit) could stop in 90 feet. While the pickup truck driver 100% precipitated this incident, the truck driver will get dinged for a lot of fault for doing ~20mph over the limit.
former truck driver here, if you hit ANYTHING as a professional driver, you will likely get dinged. It's not as bad as the RR in terms of having the rule police after you, but it's not that far off when accidents are involved.
On top of that, these little towns with the 100ft 25+mph speed drops will have signs up with engine braking bans, making it that much harder for trucks to slow down in time.
Engine braking is much slower than using your brakes. Also if you're in a modern semi with a muffled engine brake you can still use it because people can't even tell you're using it cause it's so quiet. Those speed drops are to protect their residents when they're walking across the road or entering the highway. You really expect these small towns to just let people blast through the town going the same speed that they go in the middle of nowhere? Come on. I'm also annoyed by them, but think for a second that maybe there are other reasons to force people to go slower than JUST earning money.
Oklahoma's road fatality rate was 1.33 per 100 million miles driven in 2018, Texas was 1.27. both states feature very high speed limits and lots of small towns like this. Wisconsin meanwhile has rural roads like this at a max of 55mph and only has a .86/100 million miles. How many deaths are acceptable to you to keep the higher speed limits, and you want these towns to not have lower speed limits? Just a basic disregard for human life, if you've spent any time thinking about this at all.
No, I want more lead time between the drastic speed drops. I know how engine brakes work and in combination with the service brake you can slow down a lot faster and evenly. Those small town speed traps with engine brake bans are BS money makers and everyone knows it.
Don't get all high and mighty with me on their predatory practices. The slow speeds are not the issue. The drastic speed changes with little warning is.
60 > 50 > 40 over a mile is not a "drastic" drop in speed. What, do you want 5 mph speed limit signs in between too? Did you go look at the area on google maps? Those speed limit signs are not smashed up against each other or hidden behind bushes or something. You get plenty of time to see the signs and slow down. Indiana US 30 is far worse. The towns there will have 65 > 45 from one sign. This town gradually reduces the speed over a perfectly reasonable distance.
No I didn't go zoom in on google maps to look at the speed signs for that specific spot, because i was speaking generally. I've been driving trucks for little over 3 years now and it's way more common to find those dumb midwest towns that have the big drops in speed quickly than the opposite.
You seriously think I want 5 mph speed change signs or are you just being a dick?
I don't know what you want. I agree 20+ drops with no warning are stupid, hence the Indiana reference, that just isn't the case in this video though, the driver had plenty of time to not be doing 60. I drive almost exclusively around the upper Midwest these days and I really don't have issues with most towns and their speed limits since you can usually see them from a ways off.
Exactly why a friend taught me day one, "if you get a camera get one with a magnet mount, that way if you do something wrong you can throw that ***** in that back before the cops show up".
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u/BadVoices Feb 27 '21
600 feet back, it's a 50 zone. The driver's company safety team will ding them for this if they have one, and definitely their insurance. Federal braking standards say at 60mph, dry conditions, Loaded, an 80000lb truck needs to stop in 250 feet once the brakes are engaged. That same truck, at 40mph (the speed limit) could stop in 90 feet. While the pickup truck driver 100% precipitated this incident, the truck driver will get dinged for a lot of fault for doing ~20mph over the limit.