As a driver it is one of the most important things in driving to not become so complacent that you forget what you are driving. Of course the roaring of the engine and hissing of air brakes are a constant reminder that we are not just some little four-wheeler running down the road. It is all too often though when drivers sometimes forget that they are big, slow-moving cargo haulers and are not strapped into a top-fuel dragster! It is in this instance of “failure to launch” from a standstill that I have seen accidents that can have life-changing consequences.
I like taking real-world calculations of my own driving to compare and evaluate certain situations, which is exactly what I did these past few days to help explain what might have caused the two most recent run-under crash scenes I have seen. It just so happens that one of them happened the next driveway up from where I pull out of my yard every morning. A horrible location to pull 75 feet of truck and trailer from a stop onto, it is the main drag through town and has a speed limit of 55mph, which is rarely adhered to. Timing myself pulling out safely with a load on, I averaged 8 seconds to fully make the right-hand turn and get straightened out onto the highway. Mind you though, that this is not counting the additional time needed to get up to proper speed. Although this seems like a short amount of time, opposing traffic would have covered almost two and a half football fields (at 55mph) in that span of time. Do you make sure to leave 2+ football fields of visible clear space to your left before turning right onto a highway?
For the next run-under I saw, the truck needed more time to cross completely across four lanes of opposing traffic and the median. This too averaged around 10 seconds for me to complete safely, without tossing cargo to one side of the trailer. Clearing the nearest lanes of opposing traffic was pretty easy, with only about 5 seconds needed to clear it, but the second set of lanes would have been the challenge to leave enough space for. Vehicles in the furthest lanes of opposing traffic would have traveled 269 yards from the time I accelerated out of the driveway! To make it even more dangerous, the one I saw the aftermath of had a blind corner just prior to the median crossing. I now know by the memorial placed at that site shortly after, that it had fatal consequences.
Be sure you don’t forget just how long your particular combination is. Being complacent, or even just in a hurry, can have a profound impact on safety in these situations. Most of these types of crashes often end in at least one fatality and will most certainly affect the surviving parties emotionally forever. Make sure that you plan enough space before puling out into opposing traffic and know that you are not driving a rocket!