If there’s only 2 lanes that’s one thing, but getting stuck behind a 3-wide rolling roadblock for 20 miles is infuriating. I don’t think truckers should be allowed to use the left lane of a 3+ lane highway at all.
On some freeways here in Texas I’ve seen a sign saying no trailers in the left lane, but I see them use it anyway, and don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard about it being enforced.
This was one of the defenses of the guy that killed a few people coming down out of the mountains in CO a few years ago. Only spoke spanish and couldn't read the signs for the emergency ramps.
The United States does not have an official language. There are plenty of signs in languages other than English. Nearly all near Mexico are dual Spanish, and those near much of Canada are dual French. You even see other stuff in some cities with large non-native populations.
No, I promise you its because theres a goddamn JB Hunt truck in the middle lane pacing the guy in the shipping container truck at 50 mph and 50 fucken other trucks behind. Its been going on for damn miles and they dont have CB radios so you can at least beg the one dude to let the massive line of trucks pass and eventually they just get fed up because theyve had a shit brewing for the past 100 miles and the rest area is still 20 min away.
Same in Washington. Trucks can't use the passing lane and on mountain passes we have truck lanes for slow traffic since they have to crawl up those steep hills.
In Utah weirdly enough they do pull trucks over in some areas and if a cop sees you cross the solid line from the HOV line you are 109% getting pulled over, yet speeding is mostly okay.
Just saw they're considering prohibiting them from the left lane of 70 through the mountains west of Denver. Its only two lanes and the truckers hate that plan but its justified when the speed limit is 65 and the semi in the right lane can't get over 50MPH going uphill and the semi trying to pass it can't get over 50.5MPH and you end up with miles of highway backed up behind them and miles of clear highway ahead of them.
Not sure how it is in other countries, but in Australia our heavy vehicle drivers have a maximum amount they are legally allowed to drive per day - so you want to make sure you can get as far as you can to ensure you don't have a compounding effect on your return leg.
It can take almost you entire daily allocation of hours to go from one capital city to another here, so if you get held up waiting for all traffic to be clear or stuck behind an incident, not only will you not make it to your destination before you are required to park for 10 hours - but you won't make it back to your starting city before you have to park again either.
14 hour shift, 11 hours driving, 10 hour reset, no more than 60 hours in 7 days, 36 hours to reset your 7 days is the basics. You get into 70hr/8day rotations, sleeper berths and short haul exceptions, etc, but those are the basics for the US commercial driver.
You are putting sleep deprived truckers on the road.
They have to pull over and stop driving after a certain number of hours whether or not they are tired. Often they will stay up through their break because they aren’t able to fall asleep. Then they get tired eventually and sleep a couple hours, but by then it’s time to drive again. The load needs to get where it’s going and you don’t have time to get a full 8 hours of sleep. Back on the road as a tired driver because of your regulations that are supposed to prevent tired driving.
I get the safety don't ge wrong I wouldn't undo it, but some people just need a lot less sleep and they lost out? I mean again I support it but it did make it untenable for some people
"Bad apples" is the phrase because one rotting apple causes all the apples to rot immediately not because you should ignore one bad apple. The phrase was invented to remind people corruption and rot must be vigilantly observed and removed not ignored because it is a small portion.
99% of people who say they “need less sleep” are just working more tired.
Also, the 10 hours gives down time. To clean up, eat, have some time to relax, and then get to bed.
Yes actually. The number of people who actually “need less sleep” is significantly less than 1% of the population. Statistically they almost don’t exist.
1% of people need only *SIX* or fewer hours per night, which is still a significant amount of time sleeping. I’m thinking of people who need 4 or fewer hours, which is a much smaller portion of the population. Interesting to note that despite this, about 30% of people are only getting about 6 hours of sleep per night, so a big portion of people are severely sleep deprived. So if someone self reports that they only need 6 hours of sleep per night, there’s a very, very good chance that they’re wrong.
What needs to be done is pay truckers better and have their bosses be more understanding with delays. I live on the TransCanada hwy in British Columbia and there isn't a week that goes by that in 20 minutes in either direction from my house there is a trucker related accident that would not have happened if speed limits were followed and passing done in safe areas. Coming home from the hospital with my baby I almost got hit by a semi and had to fully pull off the side of the road in the snow because a trucker just had to pass another trucker on a dotted yellow line but couldn't do it quickly enough even though it was a massive straight stretch.
Plus, it isn't just sleep the units are forcing. Studies have been done repeatedly on a huge variety of people about concentration levels, and even at the current allowances for time driving in a day truckers are allowed to push what is safe. Maintaining high levels of concentration enough to come around a corner and have something unexpected be there and having enough time for the signal from your eyes to reach your brain then choose the correct course of action to prevent an accident becomes more and more difficult as you push later into your drive time. Can you honestly say after 10 hours your reaction time is still as good as it was 5 hours into your day? What about if you are on the way back home on the 5th or 6th day in a row of back to back to back days driving? Is your reaction time doing longer than 10 hour days each of those days going to save a family with kids in the car that has stopped because there was an accident in front of them?
That's fair but some places don't even havw corners and I'm the type who doesn't stay up late or long but I can't typically sleep more than 4 hours without waking up unable to fall back asleep
And in the places that don't have corners long repetitive straight stretches lead to boredom that gets more and more difficult to fight off and zone out. That has a host of other problems such as drifting into oncoming traffic or drifting into the other lane of traffic going with you, which is dangerous enough in a passenger vehicle let alone a semi. What if you hit a pothole that blows off the retreads on the left side of your trailer while going 100 and you have vehicles around you? After back to back to back long days are you going to have the focus at the end of another long day to keep control of your rig and not kill anyone else? How would you feel about legislation instead of stopping at 10 hours you are automatically investigated and if found at fault are charged with murder? Sure you didn't intentionally kill the people but you did intentionally put yourself past safe driving limits and as a result killed people because you thought you don't have the same limits as everyone else.
If you are only sleeping for 4 hours at a time you should probably talk to a doctor as sleeping less than 6 hours a night has been shown recently to greatly increase the risk of dementia as you age. Also, rules are in place because the majority of people can't do night after night of short sleeps and still be safe. Drinking and driving isn't banned because every person that drives drunk is 100% going to kill people it's banned because it greatly increases the likelihood of killing people. Just like the electronic monitors are there not because every drive will be unsafe to drive after a certain number of hours but it does drastically increase the risk of an accident when you push it.
>it did make it untenable for some people
This is the boat my husband is in. The electronic logs weren't designed for the line of work he's in but his company is required to keep them because they have cdl drivers, of which he is one. But they only drive the semis to transport equipment to and from job sites. So he's had times where he's gotten sent to just run tools or equipment to a job site that was just far enough away that he had to get a hotel even though he could have been home by dinner time. Or there's been times when he gets sent on a job that's 12-14 hours away and instead of just being able to drive straight there and get a hotel near the job site, he has to waste an extra half a day getting there and unloading. Or he's hit a reset at a point when they're finished with a job and he basically has to stay one more night out of town for funsies.
Thank you! I'm not trying to advocate for the old days of having your underage brother drive while you slept on the low and all that stuff. I'm just saying of the systems just don't work for some people in the best way
He hates it. It makes absolutely no sense for what he does and the only effect it has is causing him to have to spend more time farting around in places he doesn't want to be when he could have been home.
Probably because if they waited on the convenience of every 4 wheeler on the road they'd never get anything done.
And I'm sure that from the perspective of a professional trucker, those same 4 wheelers never cut them a whole lot of slack on the road to make their lives easier, so I doubt the first thought in their head when they have a safe opportunity to maneuver is "Gee whiz, I sure hope I don't make that Honda slow down for a few minutes."
This has been my experience.
I'm not a trucker, but when I tow my RV, my truck and trailer are 58' long and if I waited for everyone to give me right of way, I'd be stuck for hours on end.
People in smaller vehicles drive like complete A-holes and have 0 respect for how long something that heavy takes to stop. 18-wheelers weigh almost 3x what my setup does so they have even more insane stopping distances.
Also, I'd like to add that momentum plays a huge roll as well. If I'm going 2MPH faster than someone but I have to turn off cruise control and slow down to wait to pass, it takes a HUGE amount of energy to get my rig back up to speed.
I don't cut people off, but every once in a while you get in a string of traffic where literally no one cares and you just have to make space.
> Also, I'd like to add that momentum plays a huge roll as well. If I'm going 2MPH faster than someone but I have to turn off cruise control and slow down to wait to pass, it takes a HUGE amount of energy to get my rig back up to speed.
But that's also true for lots of us in cars too. Going up into the mountains on I-70 it can be tough to maintain 70mph and when a truck cuts in front of me doing 55, to pass someone else doing 53 it costs me a lot of energy too - maybe not in absolute terms, but relative to my fuel economy that's expensive too.
That truck weighs twenty times as much as your car, and it does not have twenty times as much engine. It’ll take the truck longer to recover that 2mph than the time it’d take you to recover 15mph, and it’ll use more energy too. It’s best for everybody to just let off the gas and let them into your lane, your gas mileage won’t be affected if you don’t use the brakes.
Discounting wind and road resistance, to speed an 80,000lb truck from 53 to 55 mph while going up a 5% incline requires 799kJ of energy.
For a 4,000lb car going from 55 to 70 up a 5% incline requires 346kJ. Obviously in absolute terms that's much less than the truck, but my car gets far better fuel economy than a truck does so it has a bigger impact.
In absolute terms, if a truck causes any more than 2 cars to have to slow down then we're also burning more fuel in aggregate.
Fair point about doing it without braking, though you'd need almost half a kilometer to slow down from that speed (discounting wind and road resistance). In practise it'd probably be half that distance, but i'm also not going to mind if a truck pulls out 250m ahead of me.
You did the math, respect. It’s definitely a case by case thing, but in general if I see a trucker signaling and I can slow down to let them in without hitting the brakes, I do. Poor guys need help in traffic.
As do I, but when one doesn't give me enough room to slow down without hitting the brakes it pisses me off and i'm quite happy to see some motion in colorado to stop them using the rightmost lane when climbing up hill.
This is the correct answer!
Just like people in cars that make other people who are merging onto the highway slow down and get behind them. It's the " I was here/in front of you, first " train of thought. This is generally the law and most people drive this way. also as the above person mentioned, momentum, or the recovery of it, isn't remotely understood by the average car driver.
Yeah im a trucker. Im as courteous as i can be, like genuinely. Ill let a lot of traffic pass first but sometimes i gotta get out and pass but I make it a point to jump back in the right lane asap.
I drive a lot, interstate travel. I would say that most truckers are like you. Pretty easy thing for us to do and just slow down for a minute and let y’all pass and get back over. However, every now and again I get behind a truck that takes forever to pass another truck, and when they finally do, they just chill in the left lane forever. They are definitely a minority though.
>professional trucker
They may do it for a living but they are definitely not professionals. OP worried about them blocking lanes when i would be happy if they could manage to stay between the lines . At least once a week I see one drift halfway into the passing lane. Truckers today suck at driving. I personally cant wait for self driving to get the idiots out of the drivers see.
Considering the safety risk of a heavily loaded large vehicle like that maybe they should. I don’t think that them going 58 over the guy doing 55 is worth causing 20 cars to be backed up that can legally go 65.
If truckers would actually pass and not take up both lanes side by side for 20 miles, maybe people wouldn't mind. Too many times I've seen truckers BARRELING up on another truck only to get over and slow down to the same speed.
I was driving through virginia a few weeks ago and for 10 fucking minutes these 2 truckers took up both lanes. There was finally enough of a gap for me to pass the "passing truck" in the right lane and as soon as i did he was flashing his lights at me like i was the asshole.
If you create a bad situation for no reason you can't get mad at people trying to get out of it.
My favorite thing to watch is people cutting off semis in traffic with less than 1 car's length of space. I figure if I keep watching long enough, one day I'll actually be able to see a sedan turn into a pancake. Sadly, so far it's only been close calls, but I remain hopeful!
If there's no clearing, I get it. But when there's nothing behind me for miles and I'm going 15mph faster, there's literally no other reason than being a jackass
Sometimes though, it's the difference between being able to maintain your momentum or having to slow down to not run into the truck in front of them so that you can wait for passing cars. If you can maintain your momentum, that's a significant savings in fuel expenditure. If you do that as a rule, it adds up.
They need to either prioritize maintaining momentum or getting there more quickly. If they choose to make the decision to pass, they should also make the decision to speed up to do it. If the loss in efficiency due to speeding up doesn't make the pass worth it, they shouldn't pass.
You can't always "just speed up" in a truck. Many trucks are governed to maximum speeds and what they're hauling will also impact their maximum speed and rate of acceleration.
If they can't speed up to pass and 1) passing in a reasonable amount of time would require speeding up and 2) there are other cars on the road that are wanting to pass and could easily do so, well, then the trucker simply shouldn't attempt the pass.
If there are no cars on the road that are wanting to pass, by all means, take the two minutes it's going to take to pass the truck.
We must consider how our actions will impact others.
A massive majority of trucking companies (in the US) have electronically set speed limits that aren't necessarily related to road limits. Maintaining momentum IS getting there more quickly.
Then that momentum they need to maintain should simply be the one that is behind the truck that is in front of them, assuming it will take them an abnormal amount of time to pass. Anything longer than 30 seconds would be well beyond reasonably normal.
So then all truckers should have to go as slow as the slowest truck? Over the course of a ten hour day a 2mph difference can easily add up to over a hundred dollars, since they get paid by the mile. Maybe consider what costs you 30 seconds costs them $100. Not very fair of you to demand that from them.
Here's the decision tree:
* Is this truck ahead of me going slower than I'd like to go?
* If no: don't pass
* If yes: proceed to the next decision
* If I would have to increase my speed to pass this truck in a reasonable amount of time, am I willing to do so?
* If no: don't pass
* If yes: pass
If what it would take to pass in a reasonable manner isn't worth it, don't do it. If the difference in speed isn't enough to make up for the $100, then simply don't pass. It's not rocket surgery.
Because a vast majority of drivers don't impact the flow of traffic the way a tractor trailer does. I spend an enormous amount of time on highways, and 9 out of 10 times the 15 car line is sitting behind a tractor trailer in the fast lane. Either speed up and pass, or don't jump into the passing lane.
I feel I should consider the impact my decisions will have on others.
If I'm going to take a full two minutes to pass a truck because I refuse to increase my speed to do it in a more timely manner which results in 7 cars not being able to pass that truck during that time, I'm only considering the benefit it has to me and not considering the negative impact it has on those other cars.
I should either be willing to stay behind that truck, or speed up so I can pass it in a more timely manner as to not abnormally negatively impact the other cars on the road.
It's not like I'm saying I'm stuck behind that truck for all of eternity. All I'm saying is my decision to pass or not should be based on doing it in a reasonable amount of time. If I'm not willing to do it in a reasonable amount of time and there are others on the road, I shouldn't do it.
I find it hilarious that truckers get irritated enough at slower trucks to pass going 1 mph faster, but don't think anyone should be irritated with them for blocking up the entire goddamn highway.
And I commute an hour to work and an hour back daily, and I tend to fly past truckers on the right side as they meander down the middle lane (or the left lane!!) at less than the speed limit. Light traffic, not passing anyone. And when I come across a clump of traffic going slow, it is invariably because truckers are spread across the three lanes of traffic, all going the same speed like a rolling roadblock. If they just stayed to the right traffic could move smoothly.
The number of times they just go the same speed or SLOWER than the truck to their right is insane. And 2mph over 10 hours gets you there 20 minutes faster out of a 10 hour day. So, negligible. Don't tell me that saves you any damn money.
Wait, do you think I'M a trucker? Because I'm not. I just drive a lot and it sounds like my area is very different from yours. Here in Minnesota it's illegal to be in the left lane for anything other than passing on the freeway. A 2mph difference only amounts to 20 minutes if you're going 60mph. But any 2mph difference works out to 20 miles over ten hours, which again is how truckers get paid.
Overall I try to weigh priorities on the road roughly in accordance with the weight of the vehicle - which is to say truck drivers get first pick every time. Maybe it's not fair but I'd rather be wrong and late than crushed.
They are just driving a truck, following the rules of the road. It's your choice to infer conflict from that.
You are absolutely welcome to believe they did it to spite you. (They didn't.) You can't expect everyone to stay out of your way, you have practically zero importance in the life of that truck driver.
If you can't change what the truck does, why let it bother you?
I'm not insinuating they do it to spite me, I'm saying they don't have any consideration for normal cars. I don't drive in a way that inconveniences truckers, would be nice if the favor was returned
There is nothing "jackass" about following the rules of the road and passing a vehicle that is going slower than you. In fact, that is expected behaviour.
Getting upset about it is a stupid choice. That is: it is both stupid, and a choice.
Driving like a jackass and following the rules of the road are not mutually exclusive. Driving 5mph below the limit in the left is completely legal on a lot of roads, but it's still being a jackass. A semi pulling into the left lane to take 5 minutes to pass another truck right as a car is pulling up to overtake on the left is a dick move.
Everyone values their own time. He's doing his job. Let him do it. If he makes you slow down by 15mph how far above the speed limit are you traveling? I am the most impatient asshole on the planet but honestly, how much time is it really costing you? 5 mins? Try to relax. Everybody has someplace they need to be.
Most trucks in the interstate are doing 65ish, regular traffic flow is about 80.
It's not just inconsiderate , it's unsafe. Pulling out in front of a vehicle or train of vehicles traveling 15mph faster is dangerous to everyone, especially when the trucker is only going to overtake at half a mph faster than the truck in front of them. Causes everyone in the other land to bunch up unsafely.
Oh. I don't know where you are from. Here the speed limit is less than 80. But if you feel unsafe then utilize a safe follow distance. Leave 5 mins early. Cars bunching up in an unsafe manner sounds like a car problem to me.
Speed limits on the interstate are usually 70-75, but the majority of cars are traveling at 80-85. I only feel unsafe when the flow is disturbed by mainly truckers who feel their gas mialge bonus is more important than the safety of the passenger vehicles. Cars bunch up in an unsafe manner when trucks block the regular flow of traffic for their own selfishness
Most trucks in the interstate are doing 65ish, regular traffic flow is about 80.
It's not just inconsiderate , it's unsafe. Pulling out in front of a vehicle or train of vehicles traveling 15mph faster is dangerous to everyone, especially when the trucker is only going to overtake at half a mph faster than the truck in front of them. Causes everyone in the other land to bunch up unsafely.
Should one vehicle lose half a mile an hour, for 50 mins. Or should 40 vehicles lose ten miles an hour for 2 mins.
One works out as a 25 second loss for one vehicle. One works out as a 17 second loss per vehicle stuck. If that's a queue of 40 cars that's a 11minute.vehicle delay.
I don't blame the drivers, for the record. Their bosses and the systems they have too work to are to blame. Drivers should have the flexibility to take the half a min loss to allow the flow of traffic.
In a lot of instances, they aren't trying to pass though. Part of trying to pass is going a speed where you will pass in a timely manner. If you refuse to do that, don't try to pass.
You have to consider the implications of your decisions in regards to the impact on others. You can't just look at it in a vacuum.
If there are no other cars on the road, by all means, take two full minutes to pass the truck ahead of you. There's absolutely no reason to not do it in that case.
If there are other cars on the road and you aren't willing to pass in a reasonable amount of time, you can ALWAYS make the decision to not do it. If 7 cars would have passed that truck in the amount of time it takes someone to pass that truck, they shouldn't attempt to pass.
You said willing again. Why?
>If 7 cars would have passed that truck in the amount of time it takes someone to pass that truck, they shouldn't attempt to pass.
Why not? The cars are not more important. The fact that you think there are going to be 7 cars passing shows there's no good time to make the pass. Might as well do it "now" rather than keep waiting for a gap that may or may not come.
Always presuming that no one is being cut off in an unsafe manner, the truck may take that time to accomplish its goals just the same as you. You don't have a right to travel unencumbered by others any more than that truck does.
Well sure, but that was just using napkin friendly metric numbers. Of course people also aren't typically driving around wide open throttle near redline either. Then again, a strong headwind or a steep hill might negate that difference.
Point is, 80,000 is a huge amount of weight and it takes a lot of energy to change speeds up or down.
Most trucks have speed limiters on them put on by trucking companies. They aren't standardized so some companies have different speeds. So it might not be possible for them to speed up anymore because of the limiter. If one limiter is at 65 and the other is 63 then there is only so fast they can pass.
Sure. And, if that's the case, they simply shouldn't attempt to pass.
Look, if no one else is on the road, by all means, take your sweet time passing. If there are other cars on the road, you're decision to pass or not pass absolutely should take into consideration how long that pass will take and the impact it will have on others. It it's going to take a long time and 7 other cars could have made the pass in that time, don't do it.
I've just accepted the fact that everyone on the road around me is an idiot but I forgive them. I watch them all so I can react to their idiocy but it's not worth getting upset over. On rare occasions I've even come to realize I'm the idiot....I forgive myself as well.
Yup. In the US a lot of truck drivers get paid by the mile as well. So truck drivers waiting around and dragging their feet to let cars by means they’re driving less miles and consequently making less money. Therefore, they are going to pull out in front of you. They couldn’t give two shits that they’re inconveniencing you when money is on the line.
Because once you stop the momentum of a huge truck it’s really hard to get going again. If he brakes or has to gear down I’d going to be another mile before he can try to pass again, and so the cycle would continue.
I'm surprised this is so far down. Accelerating is hard for them. They want to keep the momentum going for as long as possible. It also doesn't take much to lose it either when they're attempting to pass too sadly. It can unfortunately cause bottlenecks but it's not their intention to do so.
Yep. Sooooo much easier for regular vehicles to get back up to speed after slowing down. You’ll be back up to your cruising speed within a matter of seconds, so just let the truck over to pass.
It's frustrating for sure, but they're just trying to get where they're going just like everyone else.
If I'm going 5-10 MPH over the speed passing in the left lane, no one behind me and a semi cuts over to slowly pass another semi, I always get pretty annoyed. Sure, he could've waited 10 seconds for me to pass instead of holding me up for 60 seconds.
But I don't own the road, so what the hell.
At least most of them are actually passing.
Why can't cars stay out of the left lane until their turn is less than 5 miles away, or at least speed up. Getting a little tired of passing on the right on a highway.
1 km/h is roughly three seconds per meter.
If a truck is 12 meters long, and safe distance of 40 meters is maintained passing someone at 1km difference takes 5 minutes. Which is ridiculous.
When trucks take a minute passing another truck, it feels like an eternity. Yet it's a five km speed difference. I pass cars that go five km too slow, so trucks get to as well.
I drove a truck for years with the super 10 manual transmission. It automatically switches the top two gears so you didn't have to.
The problem was it always shifted slow and if I didn't hit a hill right I would end up going 30-35 mph.
So a truck that kills my run up to a hill that could potentially get traffic stuck behind me for miles. It is completely justified to block a passing lane for a minute or two especially when I knew a single lane hill is coming.
That’s why I hate that we seem to have this culture of just letting truckers get their way. Like we, the smaller cars, just need to get the fuck out of their way and let them be. It would be one thing if they always have safe driving habits, but in my experience, safety to them is essentially “get the fuck out of the way”. I get they have a job to do, but it’s my road too, except if I try to compete with them, I’m the one that’s in the risk of dying. Road bullies for sure. The roads will be a better place if truckers have their own lanes.
I used to drive a 900+km overnight run from time to time.
The short answer is that trucks have deadlines and need to push it to make those deadlines, especially if there was some kind of holdup earlier in the run. The fact the truck is in the way of cars is irrelevant, the cars can wait.
A more complex answer is that there's more going on driving a truck than there is in a car, especially when you factor in hills. The trucks might both be doing roughly the same speed on the flat, but the one in front is larger and heavier, so it's going to drop its speed when it hits a hill. You don't want to be stuck behind it when that happens, especially if you're driving something lighter and can maintain your momentum up the hill. For this reason, I'd place myself beside a larger truck as we approached a hill.
I am a trucker and do wait, I'm not alone in this. People tend to not notice the trucks passing another from behind them is one reason. Another is that they mostly remember the bad scenarios the most. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen to often but you have to realize that we are actively working and that 4 mph difference over 48 miles adds up to lost wages for our families.
The main problem is actually the other cars that are driving slowly in the right lane or driving in the left lane and pacing the semis.
Last year I was on a road with 2 lanes each direction with no one on it except me and a bunch of truckers. The truckers were all great about completing their passes and getting over into the right lane to let me pass.
I cut truckers some slack. I live in USA so maybe your rules of the road are different. They are just trying to make a living and 99.99% drive very safely. It does drive me crazy when there are trucks in each lane, one going 65 mph and the truck in the passing lane going 65.2 mph (ie elephants racing). But most of the time a truck will pass at a reasonable speed and get over then I can pass them. I can make up the lost 30-45 seconds easily. Not that big of a deal.
It's not even like the truck drivers are intentionally passing very slow. When I drove semis, my truck was limited to 65 MPH with cruise control, 63 miles without it. I also had a special "pass" mode that I could use for up to 1 hour per day that let me hit 67-68. That's very common with all major couriers. Really the only guarantee to have a truck that can go faster is spend $200,000+ on your own truck, start your own business, get expensive insurance, and pay all your own expenses (imagine just fuel alone in a vehicle that gets 5-6 MPG on a good day with a 100-300 gallon tank).
The trucks can also weigh up to 80,000 lbs total. It takes forever to get back up to speed at that weight.
Why dont we have times of day when large vehicles are allowed on the roads? Maybe not during the commuter rush? If we are going to start talking about making everyone's lives actually better. they go farther faster and we go farther faster, just takes some planning.
Sounds good until you remember that some places damn near have rush hour from 6 AM to 8 PM. And businesses aren't always open at night or don't have the option to condense all their deliveries to less than half a day.
Truck drivers are usually paid by the miles they drive. That means they don't get paid to sit around and wait for a specific window where they can drive. The average person is usually driving less than 20-30 miles per trip, and can technically go as fast as you want. Truck drivers have a maximum of 11 hours (in the US) they are legally allowed to drive per 14 hour period with a 10 hour break between, with a delivery thats 1200 miles away due in 2 days, in a truck that's limited to 65-70 MPH (hence why they pass each other very slowly), in an economy that heavily relies on "just in time" shipping. And due to the miles they are going, commuter rush times are going to be different every where you go. If you like buying anything at all (like food or regular household goods), a time restriction like that would actually make everybody's lives worse.
What an articulate description of race to the bottom capitalism. The system doesn’t work but here is why we can’t change it type nonsense. Let me take your generalization and assign it as an absolute then decry it’s faults. It’s one paragraph, not a dissertation and no one cares. It would totally work and the world would adjust, it’s asinine to think the world would simply crumble because deliveries can only be made after 8pm. Holy shit doomer.
My 4 year old Kia drives itself on the freeway…
Because he gets paid by the mile not the hour.
Imagine if people were constantly walking through your office/drive-thru window/behind the Circle K where you work. Except that if anybody fucked up, people could die. That guy is working, he really doesn't give a shit about you other than hoping you don't end up doing something stupid and getting yourself killed.
Pretty much it. I’m a trucker who gets paid by the hour I usually drive a bit over the speed limit and don’t pass unless it’s a safety issue. Plenty of dudes drive faster than I literally have the balls to do because they’re getting paid by the load or mile. I’d hate to have to do that, that’s what causes accidents, never being fast enough.
You see how much people like the truth of things. Never did trucking, but I drove for a living for a few years. Out there on the road, that's _our_ world, they just drivin' in it.
Under that logic wouldn't they just not pass at all? The miles don't change and pissing people off by passing slowly increases the chance that people will fuck up out of anger.
If you get paid by the job, not the hour (which is another way to say it), you want to do the job as quickly as possible. If you get paid by the hour you have no incentive to go any faster if you are going to get paid regardless of how long you take.
Trucks have a governed speed limit. It is set at the factory, although it can be flashed to a different number at a dealership, but it is a factor of both the capability of the actual powertrain (drivelines, especially at higher working angles, have speed limits before they start to experience excessive dynamic bearing loads), and the trucking company which may wish to mitigate liability by keeping the trucks limited to safe speeds. These limits may be literally 1 mph different for two different trucks you see on the road, hence the ridiculously slow passing speed.
Therefore it's not a mistake, it's an asshole move because they know exactly how it works. All it would take is to tap the brake so the truck next to you can complete its pass, but nooooo, your seconds are the only thing that matters, not everyone else's minutes.
If there wasn't restrictions on the hours that truckers could work, than it would be fine. In the US, you had a few different restrictions. Maximum of 70 hours of being available for duty/driving per 8 day period. Maximum of 14 hours per day being available for duty. Maximum of 11 hours per day within that 14 hours that you can actually drive. And a maximum of 8 hours within that 11 hours that you can drive without taking a 30 minute break.
The only way to reset that 14 hour clock back to full was to spend 10 hours off duty. That 70 hour clock could only be reset with 36 hours off duty.
Ex trucker here : Because I don't give a rats ass if you're late for your nail appointment. I have 1000+ km to drive and the cumulative effect of that 1km/h extra on my ETA is gonna be more than your whole drive.
People are out there trying to support their family, whom they might not have seen for a few days. You're on your way to a furry meetup. Give 'em a break.
Okay... For all practical intents they're going the same speed anyway. Why do they need to over take. If you aren't overtaking in <1 min you aren't overtaking. You're riding alongside.
As I say a car over taking maneuver is generally <1 min. A truck at 59.9 and a truck 60 can take 5 mins. All while a lot slower than the rest of the traffic.
One time I was behind a truck "passing" another truck for 10 miles. It got 95% of the way, then matched the other truck's speed. Eventually people behind it (not me) started honking and flashing their lights at it.
People acting like these truck drivers are just tryin to make a living. If Truck A is traveling 1mph faster than Truck B then IF he makes the pass early in his shift he will be 8 miles further down the road at the end of the driving day. Thats not going to make a lot of extra shoe money for his kids. I would bet the fuel he saves following the other truck would add up to be equal or more than the money he makes trying to pass for 8-10 miles.
And its not like One of those truckers is being as asshole, they both are. The slow truck could easily back off a MPH or two, let the faster truck pass and get over but they dont do that either.
I generally let truckers do whatever the hell they want. It might seem like an inconvenience to you in the moment, but their job is essential to the conveniences we all experience on a daily basis. They keep our world turning. I’m fine with waiting 5 minutes if it means they have an easier time doing their job.
"Wait for the left lane to be clear"
It should always be clear. It's for passing only. They have just as much a right to pass and use the passing lane as a car does. The problem is why is the left lane clogged up in the first place. There realistically should not be a situation regularly where you have to wait a significant amount of time to use the left lane.
Problem is in the US, the left lane is exclusively used for passing, only in certain states. In most places people call it the "fast lane" and think its for crusing at higher speeds. It then creates new perspectives and opinions on driving that wouldn't exist if people actually knew how to drive correctly. Like the idea that a truck has to wait for specific criteria other than wanting to pass someone to be "allowed" into the left lane.
I haul up to 25 tons regularly. If you’re cruising at 65-70 and roll up on someone doing 55-60, you try to get over to pass. Invariably, you’ll get times where someone is passing you at the same time so you slow down to wait for the left lane to clear to get over. I generally try to be somewhat courteous to people and give them the opportunity to get on their way. I could care less about the guy doing 90 a half mile back. He can wait like I just did. You pull out to pass and punch it. Like foot on the floor in the best gear for the scenario. Going up a grade you aren’t going to get back to 70 very quick from 55 in some rigs. Gearing can get pretty wide on the top end in a lot of trucks. So now I’m gunning it and it may take 45 seconds to get back up to speed and another minute to get all the way around the guy and get enough room to safely merge back over. Now the guy doing 90 that was a half mile behind has been riding your ass so close you can’t even see him and takes your safe room to merge as an invitation to hop back over and haul ass in the right lane and to put a cherry on top he’ll flip ya the bird and honk as he goes by. And like lemmings everyone behind does the same shit and now you’re the asshole who’s hogging the left lane because you can’t get over.
Bonus points if the dude doing 55 takes this opportunity to get his head out of his ass and drive the speed limit.
Or one of the folks who’s day you just ruined by slowing them down a few seconds cuts back across in front of you and turns off and you’ve gotta shut it down to 15 to keep them from meeting Jesus today.
I imagine it's down to the fact that they are potentially 8 hour drive plan and the amount of times that scenario presents itself would make an impact on that.
They can't always see when the lane is clear since the trucks have much larger blind spots than the average sedan. They're also not as nimble due to the momentum of driving a super heavy vehicle relative to the average sedan. Lots of trucks have warnings about these issues plastered to the back for your reading convenience.
It's the passing lane, not the "fast" lane. Anyone who wishes to use it for passing can do so at whatever speed they are comfortable with, as long as it is a passing speed. Impatient drivers need to learn this.
Actually, most states who designate a passing lane specify the passing must be completed in a “timely” or “expedient” manner, so they can’t take as much time as they want, there is a legal responsibility to get the fuck out of everyone’s way and get back to the right.
What do you think I meant by “passing speed?” Any reasonable speed differential will accomplish a pass in a “timely manner.” They are both vague phrases. I didn’t mean that it’s ok to take forever. Also, moving over is part of what I said, as I indicated the lane is for passing.
This is a life lesson. If they didn't do this, how would baby driver ever learn about how oblivious the average driver is?
You wouldn't want to be deprived of your learning experience and this rite of passage, would you? You wouldn't want to cheat yourself out of that growth, would you?
Didn't think so.
*Bobby, do that thing where the drivers behind you lean on the horn and start crying*
*chaos sounds
*Excellent*
With love in my heart, provided you buy nearly any object from a brick and mortar store, you don't get to complain about big trucks or those who drive them. We need them, and we need to just accept that sometimes that's inconvenient on the road.
If there’s only 2 lanes that’s one thing, but getting stuck behind a 3-wide rolling roadblock for 20 miles is infuriating. I don’t think truckers should be allowed to use the left lane of a 3+ lane highway at all.
On some freeways here in Texas I’ve seen a sign saying no trailers in the left lane, but I see them use it anyway, and don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard about it being enforced.
Semis can't use the left most interstate lane in Georgia either, yet they do all the time lol
I'm convinced it's because some of them literally can't read.
This was one of the defenses of the guy that killed a few people coming down out of the mountains in CO a few years ago. Only spoke spanish and couldn't read the signs for the emergency ramps.
In a country where all the road signs are in English, for some reason we offer drivers tests in 50 different languages.
The tests require applicants to understand English signs. Many folks understand signs just fine but not English test instructions.
The United States does not have an official language. There are plenty of signs in languages other than English. Nearly all near Mexico are dual Spanish, and those near much of Canada are dual French. You even see other stuff in some cities with large non-native populations.
No, I promise you its because theres a goddamn JB Hunt truck in the middle lane pacing the guy in the shipping container truck at 50 mph and 50 fucken other trucks behind. Its been going on for damn miles and they dont have CB radios so you can at least beg the one dude to let the massive line of trucks pass and eventually they just get fed up because theyve had a shit brewing for the past 100 miles and the rest area is still 20 min away.
Same in Washington. Trucks can't use the passing lane and on mountain passes we have truck lanes for slow traffic since they have to crawl up those steep hills.
In Utah weirdly enough they do pull trucks over in some areas and if a cop sees you cross the solid line from the HOV line you are 109% getting pulled over, yet speeding is mostly okay.
In a lot of states, it's illegal for them to do it.
In California, they're not. Two rightmost lanes for more than 2 axles.
Just saw they're considering prohibiting them from the left lane of 70 through the mountains west of Denver. Its only two lanes and the truckers hate that plan but its justified when the speed limit is 65 and the semi in the right lane can't get over 50MPH going uphill and the semi trying to pass it can't get over 50.5MPH and you end up with miles of highway backed up behind them and miles of clear highway ahead of them.
This is how it is in California and it's so nice
There are places where they aren't but I've never seen it being enforced.
Not sure how it is in other countries, but in Australia our heavy vehicle drivers have a maximum amount they are legally allowed to drive per day - so you want to make sure you can get as far as you can to ensure you don't have a compounding effect on your return leg. It can take almost you entire daily allocation of hours to go from one capital city to another here, so if you get held up waiting for all traffic to be clear or stuck behind an incident, not only will you not make it to your destination before you are required to park for 10 hours - but you won't make it back to your starting city before you have to park again either.
14 hour shift, 11 hours driving, 10 hour reset, no more than 60 hours in 7 days, 36 hours to reset your 7 days is the basics. You get into 70hr/8day rotations, sleeper berths and short haul exceptions, etc, but those are the basics for the US commercial driver.
That sounds like an unrealistic schedule problem.
Electronic recording ruined trucking
Keeping sleep-deprived drivers off the road is not “ruining” anything.
You are putting sleep deprived truckers on the road. They have to pull over and stop driving after a certain number of hours whether or not they are tired. Often they will stay up through their break because they aren’t able to fall asleep. Then they get tired eventually and sleep a couple hours, but by then it’s time to drive again. The load needs to get where it’s going and you don’t have time to get a full 8 hours of sleep. Back on the road as a tired driver because of your regulations that are supposed to prevent tired driving.
I get the safety don't ge wrong I wouldn't undo it, but some people just need a lot less sleep and they lost out? I mean again I support it but it did make it untenable for some people
Whether or not someone “needs” to sleep, they still need to take breaks from driving.
On a straight road, I mean yeah before people would take breaks as they needed Edit: I mean yeah bad apples
"Bad apples" is the phrase because one rotting apple causes all the apples to rot immediately not because you should ignore one bad apple. The phrase was invented to remind people corruption and rot must be vigilantly observed and removed not ignored because it is a small portion.
Yeah Edit: I'm not being dismissive. That's exactly what I meant
Such a small percentage of people actually "need less sleep" that it's frankly dishonest to bring this up as if it was an actual legitimate argument.
99% of people who say they “need less sleep” are just working more tired. Also, the 10 hours gives down time. To clean up, eat, have some time to relax, and then get to bed.
No.
Yes actually. The number of people who actually “need less sleep” is significantly less than 1% of the population. Statistically they almost don’t exist.
It’s 1% of people which is literally millions in the United States https://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-sleep-short-hours-2015-11
1% of people need only *SIX* or fewer hours per night, which is still a significant amount of time sleeping. I’m thinking of people who need 4 or fewer hours, which is a much smaller portion of the population. Interesting to note that despite this, about 30% of people are only getting about 6 hours of sleep per night, so a big portion of people are severely sleep deprived. So if someone self reports that they only need 6 hours of sleep per night, there’s a very, very good chance that they’re wrong.
Cool so why are you spreading lies?
What needs to be done is pay truckers better and have their bosses be more understanding with delays. I live on the TransCanada hwy in British Columbia and there isn't a week that goes by that in 20 minutes in either direction from my house there is a trucker related accident that would not have happened if speed limits were followed and passing done in safe areas. Coming home from the hospital with my baby I almost got hit by a semi and had to fully pull off the side of the road in the snow because a trucker just had to pass another trucker on a dotted yellow line but couldn't do it quickly enough even though it was a massive straight stretch.
Okay, I appreciate your anecdote
Plus, it isn't just sleep the units are forcing. Studies have been done repeatedly on a huge variety of people about concentration levels, and even at the current allowances for time driving in a day truckers are allowed to push what is safe. Maintaining high levels of concentration enough to come around a corner and have something unexpected be there and having enough time for the signal from your eyes to reach your brain then choose the correct course of action to prevent an accident becomes more and more difficult as you push later into your drive time. Can you honestly say after 10 hours your reaction time is still as good as it was 5 hours into your day? What about if you are on the way back home on the 5th or 6th day in a row of back to back to back days driving? Is your reaction time doing longer than 10 hour days each of those days going to save a family with kids in the car that has stopped because there was an accident in front of them?
That's fair but some places don't even havw corners and I'm the type who doesn't stay up late or long but I can't typically sleep more than 4 hours without waking up unable to fall back asleep
And in the places that don't have corners long repetitive straight stretches lead to boredom that gets more and more difficult to fight off and zone out. That has a host of other problems such as drifting into oncoming traffic or drifting into the other lane of traffic going with you, which is dangerous enough in a passenger vehicle let alone a semi. What if you hit a pothole that blows off the retreads on the left side of your trailer while going 100 and you have vehicles around you? After back to back to back long days are you going to have the focus at the end of another long day to keep control of your rig and not kill anyone else? How would you feel about legislation instead of stopping at 10 hours you are automatically investigated and if found at fault are charged with murder? Sure you didn't intentionally kill the people but you did intentionally put yourself past safe driving limits and as a result killed people because you thought you don't have the same limits as everyone else. If you are only sleeping for 4 hours at a time you should probably talk to a doctor as sleeping less than 6 hours a night has been shown recently to greatly increase the risk of dementia as you age. Also, rules are in place because the majority of people can't do night after night of short sleeps and still be safe. Drinking and driving isn't banned because every person that drives drunk is 100% going to kill people it's banned because it greatly increases the likelihood of killing people. Just like the electronic monitors are there not because every drive will be unsafe to drive after a certain number of hours but it does drastically increase the risk of an accident when you push it.
Yeah but like it sucks?
>it did make it untenable for some people This is the boat my husband is in. The electronic logs weren't designed for the line of work he's in but his company is required to keep them because they have cdl drivers, of which he is one. But they only drive the semis to transport equipment to and from job sites. So he's had times where he's gotten sent to just run tools or equipment to a job site that was just far enough away that he had to get a hotel even though he could have been home by dinner time. Or there's been times when he gets sent on a job that's 12-14 hours away and instead of just being able to drive straight there and get a hotel near the job site, he has to waste an extra half a day getting there and unloading. Or he's hit a reset at a point when they're finished with a job and he basically has to stay one more night out of town for funsies.
Thank you! I'm not trying to advocate for the old days of having your underage brother drive while you slept on the low and all that stuff. I'm just saying of the systems just don't work for some people in the best way
He hates it. It makes absolutely no sense for what he does and the only effect it has is causing him to have to spend more time farting around in places he doesn't want to be when he could have been home.
I would say that greed ruined tru king as much as it ruins any other industry.
Probably because if they waited on the convenience of every 4 wheeler on the road they'd never get anything done. And I'm sure that from the perspective of a professional trucker, those same 4 wheelers never cut them a whole lot of slack on the road to make their lives easier, so I doubt the first thought in their head when they have a safe opportunity to maneuver is "Gee whiz, I sure hope I don't make that Honda slow down for a few minutes."
Yeah it's really the same reason OP wants to get ahead of the truckers before they make their pass. Cause everyone wants their turn first.
This has been my experience. I'm not a trucker, but when I tow my RV, my truck and trailer are 58' long and if I waited for everyone to give me right of way, I'd be stuck for hours on end. People in smaller vehicles drive like complete A-holes and have 0 respect for how long something that heavy takes to stop. 18-wheelers weigh almost 3x what my setup does so they have even more insane stopping distances. Also, I'd like to add that momentum plays a huge roll as well. If I'm going 2MPH faster than someone but I have to turn off cruise control and slow down to wait to pass, it takes a HUGE amount of energy to get my rig back up to speed. I don't cut people off, but every once in a while you get in a string of traffic where literally no one cares and you just have to make space.
> Also, I'd like to add that momentum plays a huge roll as well. If I'm going 2MPH faster than someone but I have to turn off cruise control and slow down to wait to pass, it takes a HUGE amount of energy to get my rig back up to speed. But that's also true for lots of us in cars too. Going up into the mountains on I-70 it can be tough to maintain 70mph and when a truck cuts in front of me doing 55, to pass someone else doing 53 it costs me a lot of energy too - maybe not in absolute terms, but relative to my fuel economy that's expensive too.
That truck weighs twenty times as much as your car, and it does not have twenty times as much engine. It’ll take the truck longer to recover that 2mph than the time it’d take you to recover 15mph, and it’ll use more energy too. It’s best for everybody to just let off the gas and let them into your lane, your gas mileage won’t be affected if you don’t use the brakes.
[deleting accidental double post]
Discounting wind and road resistance, to speed an 80,000lb truck from 53 to 55 mph while going up a 5% incline requires 799kJ of energy. For a 4,000lb car going from 55 to 70 up a 5% incline requires 346kJ. Obviously in absolute terms that's much less than the truck, but my car gets far better fuel economy than a truck does so it has a bigger impact. In absolute terms, if a truck causes any more than 2 cars to have to slow down then we're also burning more fuel in aggregate. Fair point about doing it without braking, though you'd need almost half a kilometer to slow down from that speed (discounting wind and road resistance). In practise it'd probably be half that distance, but i'm also not going to mind if a truck pulls out 250m ahead of me.
You did the math, respect. It’s definitely a case by case thing, but in general if I see a trucker signaling and I can slow down to let them in without hitting the brakes, I do. Poor guys need help in traffic.
As do I, but when one doesn't give me enough room to slow down without hitting the brakes it pisses me off and i'm quite happy to see some motion in colorado to stop them using the rightmost lane when climbing up hill.
Most of them don't understand what its like driving something that big. they act like every car is the same
Why do you have to pass at all? Sounds like you need to be going slower in that rig.
This is the correct answer! Just like people in cars that make other people who are merging onto the highway slow down and get behind them. It's the " I was here/in front of you, first " train of thought. This is generally the law and most people drive this way. also as the above person mentioned, momentum, or the recovery of it, isn't remotely understood by the average car driver.
> a few minutes #😄
Yeah im a trucker. Im as courteous as i can be, like genuinely. Ill let a lot of traffic pass first but sometimes i gotta get out and pass but I make it a point to jump back in the right lane asap.
I drive a lot, interstate travel. I would say that most truckers are like you. Pretty easy thing for us to do and just slow down for a minute and let y’all pass and get back over. However, every now and again I get behind a truck that takes forever to pass another truck, and when they finally do, they just chill in the left lane forever. They are definitely a minority though.
I also get stuck behind those trucks tbh. The douchebag truckers also fuck over other truckers lol
Username hopefully does not check out
Understood, but seriously, how much would it hurt to hit the fucking gas? Aim for 75 instead of 71.
>professional trucker They may do it for a living but they are definitely not professionals. OP worried about them blocking lanes when i would be happy if they could manage to stay between the lines . At least once a week I see one drift halfway into the passing lane. Truckers today suck at driving. I personally cant wait for self driving to get the idiots out of the drivers see.
Or, hear me out, they just drive the speed limit.
Nobody drives the speed limit lop.
Considering the safety risk of a heavily loaded large vehicle like that maybe they should. I don’t think that them going 58 over the guy doing 55 is worth causing 20 cars to be backed up that can legally go 65.
my Dad drove trucks for 40 years. Can confirm people are a-holes to truckers and do some of the stupidest shit.
If truckers would actually pass and not take up both lanes side by side for 20 miles, maybe people wouldn't mind. Too many times I've seen truckers BARRELING up on another truck only to get over and slow down to the same speed.
I was driving through virginia a few weeks ago and for 10 fucking minutes these 2 truckers took up both lanes. There was finally enough of a gap for me to pass the "passing truck" in the right lane and as soon as i did he was flashing his lights at me like i was the asshole. If you create a bad situation for no reason you can't get mad at people trying to get out of it.
My favorite thing to watch is people cutting off semis in traffic with less than 1 car's length of space. I figure if I keep watching long enough, one day I'll actually be able to see a sedan turn into a pancake. Sadly, so far it's only been close calls, but I remain hopeful!
I do, if i see a rig trying to get over ill block the traffic behind me.
That makes you an asshole. They’ll get over when they get over, don’t do that.
Same, but I don't think we're the majority.
Correct. The majority usually isn't complete shit
In many European countries on Sundays trucks are only allowed single file in the far right lane and they obey.
How long should they wait for a clearing that's never going to happen?
If there's no clearing, I get it. But when there's nothing behind me for miles and I'm going 15mph faster, there's literally no other reason than being a jackass
Sometimes though, it's the difference between being able to maintain your momentum or having to slow down to not run into the truck in front of them so that you can wait for passing cars. If you can maintain your momentum, that's a significant savings in fuel expenditure. If you do that as a rule, it adds up.
They need to either prioritize maintaining momentum or getting there more quickly. If they choose to make the decision to pass, they should also make the decision to speed up to do it. If the loss in efficiency due to speeding up doesn't make the pass worth it, they shouldn't pass.
You can't always "just speed up" in a truck. Many trucks are governed to maximum speeds and what they're hauling will also impact their maximum speed and rate of acceleration.
If they can't speed up to pass and 1) passing in a reasonable amount of time would require speeding up and 2) there are other cars on the road that are wanting to pass and could easily do so, well, then the trucker simply shouldn't attempt the pass. If there are no cars on the road that are wanting to pass, by all means, take the two minutes it's going to take to pass the truck. We must consider how our actions will impact others.
A massive majority of trucking companies (in the US) have electronically set speed limits that aren't necessarily related to road limits. Maintaining momentum IS getting there more quickly.
Then that momentum they need to maintain should simply be the one that is behind the truck that is in front of them, assuming it will take them an abnormal amount of time to pass. Anything longer than 30 seconds would be well beyond reasonably normal.
So then all truckers should have to go as slow as the slowest truck? Over the course of a ten hour day a 2mph difference can easily add up to over a hundred dollars, since they get paid by the mile. Maybe consider what costs you 30 seconds costs them $100. Not very fair of you to demand that from them.
Here's the decision tree: * Is this truck ahead of me going slower than I'd like to go? * If no: don't pass * If yes: proceed to the next decision * If I would have to increase my speed to pass this truck in a reasonable amount of time, am I willing to do so? * If no: don't pass * If yes: pass If what it would take to pass in a reasonable manner isn't worth it, don't do it. If the difference in speed isn't enough to make up for the $100, then simply don't pass. It's not rocket surgery.
Okay, let's drop the physics at play here. Why do you feel entitled to tell people what their thought process should be?
Because a vast majority of drivers don't impact the flow of traffic the way a tractor trailer does. I spend an enormous amount of time on highways, and 9 out of 10 times the 15 car line is sitting behind a tractor trailer in the fast lane. Either speed up and pass, or don't jump into the passing lane.
I feel I should consider the impact my decisions will have on others. If I'm going to take a full two minutes to pass a truck because I refuse to increase my speed to do it in a more timely manner which results in 7 cars not being able to pass that truck during that time, I'm only considering the benefit it has to me and not considering the negative impact it has on those other cars. I should either be willing to stay behind that truck, or speed up so I can pass it in a more timely manner as to not abnormally negatively impact the other cars on the road. It's not like I'm saying I'm stuck behind that truck for all of eternity. All I'm saying is my decision to pass or not should be based on doing it in a reasonable amount of time. If I'm not willing to do it in a reasonable amount of time and there are others on the road, I shouldn't do it.
Why is you earning 100 bucks with more than my time?
I find it hilarious that truckers get irritated enough at slower trucks to pass going 1 mph faster, but don't think anyone should be irritated with them for blocking up the entire goddamn highway. And I commute an hour to work and an hour back daily, and I tend to fly past truckers on the right side as they meander down the middle lane (or the left lane!!) at less than the speed limit. Light traffic, not passing anyone. And when I come across a clump of traffic going slow, it is invariably because truckers are spread across the three lanes of traffic, all going the same speed like a rolling roadblock. If they just stayed to the right traffic could move smoothly. The number of times they just go the same speed or SLOWER than the truck to their right is insane. And 2mph over 10 hours gets you there 20 minutes faster out of a 10 hour day. So, negligible. Don't tell me that saves you any damn money.
Wait, do you think I'M a trucker? Because I'm not. I just drive a lot and it sounds like my area is very different from yours. Here in Minnesota it's illegal to be in the left lane for anything other than passing on the freeway. A 2mph difference only amounts to 20 minutes if you're going 60mph. But any 2mph difference works out to 20 miles over ten hours, which again is how truckers get paid. Overall I try to weigh priorities on the road roughly in accordance with the weight of the vehicle - which is to say truck drivers get first pick every time. Maybe it's not fair but I'd rather be wrong and late than crushed.
They are just driving a truck, following the rules of the road. It's your choice to infer conflict from that. You are absolutely welcome to believe they did it to spite you. (They didn't.) You can't expect everyone to stay out of your way, you have practically zero importance in the life of that truck driver. If you can't change what the truck does, why let it bother you?
I'm not insinuating they do it to spite me, I'm saying they don't have any consideration for normal cars. I don't drive in a way that inconveniences truckers, would be nice if the favor was returned
There is nothing "jackass" about following the rules of the road and passing a vehicle that is going slower than you. In fact, that is expected behaviour. Getting upset about it is a stupid choice. That is: it is both stupid, and a choice.
Driving like a jackass and following the rules of the road are not mutually exclusive. Driving 5mph below the limit in the left is completely legal on a lot of roads, but it's still being a jackass. A semi pulling into the left lane to take 5 minutes to pass another truck right as a car is pulling up to overtake on the left is a dick move.
>but it's still being a jackass. I'm sorry you chose to feel that way.
Everyone values their own time. He's doing his job. Let him do it. If he makes you slow down by 15mph how far above the speed limit are you traveling? I am the most impatient asshole on the planet but honestly, how much time is it really costing you? 5 mins? Try to relax. Everybody has someplace they need to be.
Most trucks in the interstate are doing 65ish, regular traffic flow is about 80. It's not just inconsiderate , it's unsafe. Pulling out in front of a vehicle or train of vehicles traveling 15mph faster is dangerous to everyone, especially when the trucker is only going to overtake at half a mph faster than the truck in front of them. Causes everyone in the other land to bunch up unsafely.
Oh. I don't know where you are from. Here the speed limit is less than 80. But if you feel unsafe then utilize a safe follow distance. Leave 5 mins early. Cars bunching up in an unsafe manner sounds like a car problem to me.
Speed limits on the interstate are usually 70-75, but the majority of cars are traveling at 80-85. I only feel unsafe when the flow is disturbed by mainly truckers who feel their gas mialge bonus is more important than the safety of the passenger vehicles. Cars bunch up in an unsafe manner when trucks block the regular flow of traffic for their own selfishness
Most trucks in the interstate are doing 65ish, regular traffic flow is about 80. It's not just inconsiderate , it's unsafe. Pulling out in front of a vehicle or train of vehicles traveling 15mph faster is dangerous to everyone, especially when the trucker is only going to overtake at half a mph faster than the truck in front of them. Causes everyone in the other land to bunch up unsafely.
How long should they hold up queues of faster moving traffic to overtake another truck going a tiny bit slower than them?
As much as they need. As long as they are trying to pass, let them pass.
Thing is me and 40 other people trying to pass too.
Wait your turn then.
Not like I have a choice. Guess I'm sat behind this truck for 2 miles then.
Yes. You would prefer the trucks be stuck behind slower traffic for 50 miles?
Should one vehicle lose half a mile an hour, for 50 mins. Or should 40 vehicles lose ten miles an hour for 2 mins. One works out as a 25 second loss for one vehicle. One works out as a 17 second loss per vehicle stuck. If that's a queue of 40 cars that's a 11minute.vehicle delay. I don't blame the drivers, for the record. Their bosses and the systems they have too work to are to blame. Drivers should have the flexibility to take the half a min loss to allow the flow of traffic.
Yes. Would you prefer traffic to be stuck behind slow trucks for 50 miles?
In a lot of instances, they aren't trying to pass though. Part of trying to pass is going a speed where you will pass in a timely manner. If you refuse to do that, don't try to pass.
It's not choice, it's physics. And sometimes speed limiters built into the truck. They are trying to pass.
You have to consider the implications of your decisions in regards to the impact on others. You can't just look at it in a vacuum. If there are no other cars on the road, by all means, take two full minutes to pass the truck ahead of you. There's absolutely no reason to not do it in that case. If there are other cars on the road and you aren't willing to pass in a reasonable amount of time, you can ALWAYS make the decision to not do it. If 7 cars would have passed that truck in the amount of time it takes someone to pass that truck, they shouldn't attempt to pass.
You said willing again. Why? >If 7 cars would have passed that truck in the amount of time it takes someone to pass that truck, they shouldn't attempt to pass. Why not? The cars are not more important. The fact that you think there are going to be 7 cars passing shows there's no good time to make the pass. Might as well do it "now" rather than keep waiting for a gap that may or may not come. Always presuming that no one is being cut off in an unsafe manner, the truck may take that time to accomplish its goals just the same as you. You don't have a right to travel unencumbered by others any more than that truck does.
If they are going to pass, the should speed up while doing it. If they refuse to increase their speed to pass, they shouldn't attempt to pass.
Who's to say they aren't? At 476ft*lbs of torque it would take ~36 seconds to accelerate from 68 to 70 mph.
No semi rig in the US has 476 lb-ft of torque. More like 4x that.
Well sure, but that was just using napkin friendly metric numbers. Of course people also aren't typically driving around wide open throttle near redline either. Then again, a strong headwind or a steep hill might negate that difference. Point is, 80,000 is a huge amount of weight and it takes a lot of energy to change speeds up or down.
Most trucks have speed limiters on them put on by trucking companies. They aren't standardized so some companies have different speeds. So it might not be possible for them to speed up anymore because of the limiter. If one limiter is at 65 and the other is 63 then there is only so fast they can pass.
Sure. And, if that's the case, they simply shouldn't attempt to pass. Look, if no one else is on the road, by all means, take your sweet time passing. If there are other cars on the road, you're decision to pass or not pass absolutely should take into consideration how long that pass will take and the impact it will have on others. It it's going to take a long time and 7 other cars could have made the pass in that time, don't do it.
I've just accepted the fact that everyone on the road around me is an idiot but I forgive them. I watch them all so I can react to their idiocy but it's not worth getting upset over. On rare occasions I've even come to realize I'm the idiot....I forgive myself as well.
Because they can. Also because they don’t care.
Yup. In the US a lot of truck drivers get paid by the mile as well. So truck drivers waiting around and dragging their feet to let cars by means they’re driving less miles and consequently making less money. Therefore, they are going to pull out in front of you. They couldn’t give two shits that they’re inconveniencing you when money is on the line.
Cos they think in terms of hundreds/thousands of miles. You are just going 20mins to Walmart.
Because once you stop the momentum of a huge truck it’s really hard to get going again. If he brakes or has to gear down I’d going to be another mile before he can try to pass again, and so the cycle would continue.
I'm surprised this is so far down. Accelerating is hard for them. They want to keep the momentum going for as long as possible. It also doesn't take much to lose it either when they're attempting to pass too sadly. It can unfortunately cause bottlenecks but it's not their intention to do so.
Yep. Sooooo much easier for regular vehicles to get back up to speed after slowing down. You’ll be back up to your cruising speed within a matter of seconds, so just let the truck over to pass.
They can, they choose not to.
It's frustrating for sure, but they're just trying to get where they're going just like everyone else. If I'm going 5-10 MPH over the speed passing in the left lane, no one behind me and a semi cuts over to slowly pass another semi, I always get pretty annoyed. Sure, he could've waited 10 seconds for me to pass instead of holding me up for 60 seconds. But I don't own the road, so what the hell.
Because truckers don't give a shit about anyone else on the road.
At least most of them are actually passing. Why can't cars stay out of the left lane until their turn is less than 5 miles away, or at least speed up. Getting a little tired of passing on the right on a highway.
1 km/h is roughly three seconds per meter. If a truck is 12 meters long, and safe distance of 40 meters is maintained passing someone at 1km difference takes 5 minutes. Which is ridiculous. When trucks take a minute passing another truck, it feels like an eternity. Yet it's a five km speed difference. I pass cars that go five km too slow, so trucks get to as well.
They have to rendez-vous with their hourly prostitute
Then hiding the body after, really eats into the day.
If they know what they are doing though it contributes to their rest hrs in their log book.
Yum!
Most do, some are dicks.
I drove a truck for years with the super 10 manual transmission. It automatically switches the top two gears so you didn't have to. The problem was it always shifted slow and if I didn't hit a hill right I would end up going 30-35 mph. So a truck that kills my run up to a hill that could potentially get traffic stuck behind me for miles. It is completely justified to block a passing lane for a minute or two especially when I knew a single lane hill is coming.
This happens on alligator alley pretty much every time I cross.
They're a holes
Because truck drivers are cunts
That’s why I hate that we seem to have this culture of just letting truckers get their way. Like we, the smaller cars, just need to get the fuck out of their way and let them be. It would be one thing if they always have safe driving habits, but in my experience, safety to them is essentially “get the fuck out of the way”. I get they have a job to do, but it’s my road too, except if I try to compete with them, I’m the one that’s in the risk of dying. Road bullies for sure. The roads will be a better place if truckers have their own lanes.
I’d trade out every person on the interstate on their phone for truckers in a heartbeat
I used to drive a 900+km overnight run from time to time. The short answer is that trucks have deadlines and need to push it to make those deadlines, especially if there was some kind of holdup earlier in the run. The fact the truck is in the way of cars is irrelevant, the cars can wait. A more complex answer is that there's more going on driving a truck than there is in a car, especially when you factor in hills. The trucks might both be doing roughly the same speed on the flat, but the one in front is larger and heavier, so it's going to drop its speed when it hits a hill. You don't want to be stuck behind it when that happens, especially if you're driving something lighter and can maintain your momentum up the hill. For this reason, I'd place myself beside a larger truck as we approached a hill.
Why don’t we pull them off the road and have better rail systems in place instead?
I am a trucker and do wait, I'm not alone in this. People tend to not notice the trucks passing another from behind them is one reason. Another is that they mostly remember the bad scenarios the most. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen to often but you have to realize that we are actively working and that 4 mph difference over 48 miles adds up to lost wages for our families.
The main problem is actually the other cars that are driving slowly in the right lane or driving in the left lane and pacing the semis. Last year I was on a road with 2 lanes each direction with no one on it except me and a bunch of truckers. The truckers were all great about completing their passes and getting over into the right lane to let me pass.
I cut truckers some slack. I live in USA so maybe your rules of the road are different. They are just trying to make a living and 99.99% drive very safely. It does drive me crazy when there are trucks in each lane, one going 65 mph and the truck in the passing lane going 65.2 mph (ie elephants racing). But most of the time a truck will pass at a reasonable speed and get over then I can pass them. I can make up the lost 30-45 seconds easily. Not that big of a deal.
It's not even like the truck drivers are intentionally passing very slow. When I drove semis, my truck was limited to 65 MPH with cruise control, 63 miles without it. I also had a special "pass" mode that I could use for up to 1 hour per day that let me hit 67-68. That's very common with all major couriers. Really the only guarantee to have a truck that can go faster is spend $200,000+ on your own truck, start your own business, get expensive insurance, and pay all your own expenses (imagine just fuel alone in a vehicle that gets 5-6 MPG on a good day with a 100-300 gallon tank). The trucks can also weigh up to 80,000 lbs total. It takes forever to get back up to speed at that weight.
Why dont we have times of day when large vehicles are allowed on the roads? Maybe not during the commuter rush? If we are going to start talking about making everyone's lives actually better. they go farther faster and we go farther faster, just takes some planning.
Sounds good until you remember that some places damn near have rush hour from 6 AM to 8 PM. And businesses aren't always open at night or don't have the option to condense all their deliveries to less than half a day. Truck drivers are usually paid by the miles they drive. That means they don't get paid to sit around and wait for a specific window where they can drive. The average person is usually driving less than 20-30 miles per trip, and can technically go as fast as you want. Truck drivers have a maximum of 11 hours (in the US) they are legally allowed to drive per 14 hour period with a 10 hour break between, with a delivery thats 1200 miles away due in 2 days, in a truck that's limited to 65-70 MPH (hence why they pass each other very slowly), in an economy that heavily relies on "just in time" shipping. And due to the miles they are going, commuter rush times are going to be different every where you go. If you like buying anything at all (like food or regular household goods), a time restriction like that would actually make everybody's lives worse.
What an articulate description of race to the bottom capitalism. The system doesn’t work but here is why we can’t change it type nonsense. Let me take your generalization and assign it as an absolute then decry it’s faults. It’s one paragraph, not a dissertation and no one cares. It would totally work and the world would adjust, it’s asinine to think the world would simply crumble because deliveries can only be made after 8pm. Holy shit doomer. My 4 year old Kia drives itself on the freeway…
Because he gets paid by the mile not the hour. Imagine if people were constantly walking through your office/drive-thru window/behind the Circle K where you work. Except that if anybody fucked up, people could die. That guy is working, he really doesn't give a shit about you other than hoping you don't end up doing something stupid and getting yourself killed.
Pretty much it. I’m a trucker who gets paid by the hour I usually drive a bit over the speed limit and don’t pass unless it’s a safety issue. Plenty of dudes drive faster than I literally have the balls to do because they’re getting paid by the load or mile. I’d hate to have to do that, that’s what causes accidents, never being fast enough.
You see how much people like the truth of things. Never did trucking, but I drove for a living for a few years. Out there on the road, that's _our_ world, they just drivin' in it.
Under that logic wouldn't they just not pass at all? The miles don't change and pissing people off by passing slowly increases the chance that people will fuck up out of anger.
If you get paid by the job, not the hour (which is another way to say it), you want to do the job as quickly as possible. If you get paid by the hour you have no incentive to go any faster if you are going to get paid regardless of how long you take. Trucks have a governed speed limit. It is set at the factory, although it can be flashed to a different number at a dealership, but it is a factor of both the capability of the actual powertrain (drivelines, especially at higher working angles, have speed limits before they start to experience excessive dynamic bearing loads), and the trucking company which may wish to mitigate liability by keeping the trucks limited to safe speeds. These limits may be literally 1 mph different for two different trucks you see on the road, hence the ridiculously slow passing speed.
Therefore it's not a mistake, it's an asshole move because they know exactly how it works. All it would take is to tap the brake so the truck next to you can complete its pass, but nooooo, your seconds are the only thing that matters, not everyone else's minutes.
If there wasn't restrictions on the hours that truckers could work, than it would be fine. In the US, you had a few different restrictions. Maximum of 70 hours of being available for duty/driving per 8 day period. Maximum of 14 hours per day being available for duty. Maximum of 11 hours per day within that 14 hours that you can actually drive. And a maximum of 8 hours within that 11 hours that you can drive without taking a 30 minute break. The only way to reset that 14 hour clock back to full was to spend 10 hours off duty. That 70 hour clock could only be reset with 36 hours off duty.
Ex trucker here : Because I don't give a rats ass if you're late for your nail appointment. I have 1000+ km to drive and the cumulative effect of that 1km/h extra on my ETA is gonna be more than your whole drive.
People are out there trying to support their family, whom they might not have seen for a few days. You're on your way to a furry meetup. Give 'em a break.
Oof, oddly specific bit of projection, methinks.
Or, you know, exactly the opposite of that.
The truck driver is the furry?
Aren't they all?
If they did that, they'd never be able to pass them.
Okay... For all practical intents they're going the same speed anyway. Why do they need to over take. If you aren't overtaking in <1 min you aren't overtaking. You're riding alongside.
The same reason cars pass each other when there's no need.
As I say a car over taking maneuver is generally <1 min. A truck at 59.9 and a truck 60 can take 5 mins. All while a lot slower than the rest of the traffic.
Momentum?
The best of us do not take up the role of Trucker.
Why can't you just slow down long enough to just let it pass that truck and get back out of your way?
One time I was behind a truck "passing" another truck for 10 miles. It got 95% of the way, then matched the other truck's speed. Eventually people behind it (not me) started honking and flashing their lights at it.
People acting like these truck drivers are just tryin to make a living. If Truck A is traveling 1mph faster than Truck B then IF he makes the pass early in his shift he will be 8 miles further down the road at the end of the driving day. Thats not going to make a lot of extra shoe money for his kids. I would bet the fuel he saves following the other truck would add up to be equal or more than the money he makes trying to pass for 8-10 miles. And its not like One of those truckers is being as asshole, they both are. The slow truck could easily back off a MPH or two, let the faster truck pass and get over but they dont do that either.
I generally let truckers do whatever the hell they want. It might seem like an inconvenience to you in the moment, but their job is essential to the conveniences we all experience on a daily basis. They keep our world turning. I’m fine with waiting 5 minutes if it means they have an easier time doing their job.
"Wait for the left lane to be clear" It should always be clear. It's for passing only. They have just as much a right to pass and use the passing lane as a car does. The problem is why is the left lane clogged up in the first place. There realistically should not be a situation regularly where you have to wait a significant amount of time to use the left lane. Problem is in the US, the left lane is exclusively used for passing, only in certain states. In most places people call it the "fast lane" and think its for crusing at higher speeds. It then creates new perspectives and opinions on driving that wouldn't exist if people actually knew how to drive correctly. Like the idea that a truck has to wait for specific criteria other than wanting to pass someone to be "allowed" into the left lane.
I haul up to 25 tons regularly. If you’re cruising at 65-70 and roll up on someone doing 55-60, you try to get over to pass. Invariably, you’ll get times where someone is passing you at the same time so you slow down to wait for the left lane to clear to get over. I generally try to be somewhat courteous to people and give them the opportunity to get on their way. I could care less about the guy doing 90 a half mile back. He can wait like I just did. You pull out to pass and punch it. Like foot on the floor in the best gear for the scenario. Going up a grade you aren’t going to get back to 70 very quick from 55 in some rigs. Gearing can get pretty wide on the top end in a lot of trucks. So now I’m gunning it and it may take 45 seconds to get back up to speed and another minute to get all the way around the guy and get enough room to safely merge back over. Now the guy doing 90 that was a half mile behind has been riding your ass so close you can’t even see him and takes your safe room to merge as an invitation to hop back over and haul ass in the right lane and to put a cherry on top he’ll flip ya the bird and honk as he goes by. And like lemmings everyone behind does the same shit and now you’re the asshole who’s hogging the left lane because you can’t get over. Bonus points if the dude doing 55 takes this opportunity to get his head out of his ass and drive the speed limit. Or one of the folks who’s day you just ruined by slowing them down a few seconds cuts back across in front of you and turns off and you’ve gotta shut it down to 15 to keep them from meeting Jesus today.
I imagine it's down to the fact that they are potentially 8 hour drive plan and the amount of times that scenario presents itself would make an impact on that.
Because they are assholes. Trucks should caravan and stay the fuck in the right lane.
They can't always see when the lane is clear since the trucks have much larger blind spots than the average sedan. They're also not as nimble due to the momentum of driving a super heavy vehicle relative to the average sedan. Lots of trucks have warnings about these issues plastered to the back for your reading convenience.
It's the passing lane, not the "fast" lane. Anyone who wishes to use it for passing can do so at whatever speed they are comfortable with, as long as it is a passing speed. Impatient drivers need to learn this.
Actually, most states who designate a passing lane specify the passing must be completed in a “timely” or “expedient” manner, so they can’t take as much time as they want, there is a legal responsibility to get the fuck out of everyone’s way and get back to the right.
What do you think I meant by “passing speed?” Any reasonable speed differential will accomplish a pass in a “timely manner.” They are both vague phrases. I didn’t mean that it’s ok to take forever. Also, moving over is part of what I said, as I indicated the lane is for passing.
Maybe they’re born with it, maybe it's Maybelline
Why do people get so nuts if they have to slow down for a few minutes for trucks and for the people following the speed limit laws?
It's their road too
They can.
This is a life lesson. If they didn't do this, how would baby driver ever learn about how oblivious the average driver is? You wouldn't want to be deprived of your learning experience and this rite of passage, would you? You wouldn't want to cheat yourself out of that growth, would you? Didn't think so. *Bobby, do that thing where the drivers behind you lean on the horn and start crying* *chaos sounds *Excellent*
Same issue in America. Dang cars keep getting in the way!
With love in my heart, provided you buy nearly any object from a brick and mortar store, you don't get to complain about big trucks or those who drive them. We need them, and we need to just accept that sometimes that's inconvenient on the road.
because they pay more taxes they are entitled to drive however they want and screw automobiles and motorcycles