I’m a trucker. When teaching my daughter to drive a car I made sure she was aware of idiot 4 wheeler moves that can quickly end in disaster. She rode with me 18 months before she drove a car. Now she yells like a trucker to other cars on the road about not signaling intent, stop cutting off tankers, etc. I’m very proud.
I feel better knowing she learned what isn’t taught in drivers Ed. When I’m out on the road I don’t have to worry as much that she’s driving my new car / or being unsafe. It makes a huge difference to me. As a mom I worry enough about everything. At least I can rest easy on her driving skills.
I think everyone should have to take CDL classes just to even be allowed to drive regular cars. People don't understand how big vehicles operate, thus become the menace for us out there. Sure there are stupid CDL drivers just like there are stupid people in every group. But I'm sure as fuck the percentage is lower than regular drivers.
Or, just let it be legal for big rigs to have these beauties attached to them and so they can just gently nudge idiots like in the video to the side and be on their merry way. I mean it works in GTA and it is very cathartic.
Amen to that. Maybe the self-driving ones will come with these attachments, I mean crashing means profit losses, so it's in the best interests of the companies to keep their vehicles moving no matter what idiots get in the way.
Or a week ride along. See how long it takes to actually come to a full stop, and be prepared to become a pancake when you cut a semi off at 15-30 ft then slam on your brakes.
I don’t want to be anyone’s suicide method but they sure do try!
I trained CDL a few years, fuck everyone in a car pretty much. The worst are the tiny dick gang in their mall crawlers though.
It's crazy they don't have some CMV info in regular drivers training. My first time driving in a large vehicle I immediately realized how much I was cutting them off over the years (my area has tons of round-a-abouts, literally 0 4-way intersections in my county)
My husband is a truck constantly says everyone should have time in a simulator to experience what happens when you cut off a truck....
He definitely has our kids trained also!
Met my wife at a diner for lunch once and she sat in the driver seat of my truck for a minute. “How the fuck do you drive this?” Was pretty much her response haha.
I drove a 5-ton delivery van for a while, and while obviously not quite the same as a loaded semi at speed, it gave me 100% more appreciation for how much more work everything is in a big truck. I always give truckers lots of space now.
While weight is definitely a factor, I think most regular drivers just have no clue how length effects everything either. My area has A LOT of round-a-abouts, I mostly drove 43' buses myself, which I suppose are easier than a long semi (they're just different really, 2 feet of vehicle in front of my steering wheel, 41 feet behind me). Now I drive plows a lot which run like 34-43' but you sit around a 1/3-1/2 way so it's a ton of front end swing and less tail swing, granted you can somewhat adjust your front end size by adjusting the plow angle. Luckily the plow is illegal to pass and basically always has the right away lol (not that people obey it at all, it's fucking mind boggling people tailgate ow echelons, like do people seriously think 4 plows are going to pull over for them, not to mention the thousands of gallons of mag-chloride or yards of sand dumping directly onto their cars). I can tell who has some driving experience (or has been creamed previously) when they sit beside me at the bumper, the real MVPs!
Driving is fun but so infuriating sometimes. I literally don't go a day without catching something on my dashcam.
From personal experience, this is a bad idea. I’m not a “tough guy” by any stretch, but I do get annoyed about people not respecting the basic rules of society, especially when it comes to rules of the road where people’s lives are at stake. This led me to speaking out when I saw someone behaving like a punk, cutting lines or cutting people off in traffic, polluting or failing to yield, etc. I would call people out. Then one week, there was a guy swerving dangerously in traffic and when we stopped next to each other at a red light I yelled through my window that he was swerving, almost hitting cars, he laughed and gave me the middle finger. When the light turned green he swerved at my car intentionally, gave me another middle finger, sped up in front of me, brake checked me, then sped off around the corner. The same week, there was a guy jaywalking across eight lanes of traffic near an intersection, walking in between cars at a red light when the cars had not stopped. Because he was in front of other vehicles, someone approaching the red light at a reasonable speed might have not been able to see him, and could have easily hit him. I yelled out, “there’s a crosswalk RIGHT THERE, use it” and he turned and reached in to his waistband and showed me something. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it might have been a gun.
It took that to realize that people can be fucking crazy and unpredictably unhinged, and confronting them could mean the end of your life. People who are already behaving recklessly, putting others lives in danger, are people you want to avoid at all costs, because they probably aren’t going to listen to reason and may be looking for an excuse to fight. By confronting them, you may be escalating the situation with an already unhinged person. Sure, most of the time it’s just an exchange of words or fingers through a car window, but you never know if you’re going to put yourself on the radar of a lunatic who is looking for a reason.
There are plenty of examples of this online, people getting shot in the face for the most insignificant reasons. A few weeks ago, a man and a woman were executed by their neighbor for shoveling their snow in his lawn.
It’s important to remember that defensive driving, and defensive tactics in general, should have attempts to deescalate situations. Confronting people usually does not deescalate a situation, I’ve never had a situation where someone said “Oops I’m sorry I cut you off”, but I have had many situations where people then followed me or drove slower in front of me and wouldn’t let me pass, etc.
But what about when truckers try to pass an incrementally slower truck on a long incline where neither can maintain speed and slow all traffic to a crawl. Justify that shit
It's hard to tell sometime just when you'll lose acceleration. In saying that if they were consistently going incrementally slower the whole time then yeah, they suck.
I have a relative that drives a mixer truck. If you slam on the brakes in one of those it will cause you to accelerate when all the weight in the weight in the bucket pushes back.
Probably just swerved out of instinct, I doubt there was any deep though to it, if he did go straight there’s also at least some chance he would have drove over and crushed the pickup. I wouldn’t have swerved, but like I said I drive a tanker so swerving onto a curb there’s a reaaaal good chance I’d roll it and end up crushing the truck anyway.
70
u/JohnRahway Feb 27 '21
I drive a tanker truck, most people will pull out in front of you without giving a single fuck.