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About Me
I'm the Pickups host here at Edmunds CarSpace.com - be sure to check out the Pickups forums if you have or are interested in one!
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The Big Rigs
We're gonna talk about the big ones... trucks and buses that require those 3 marker lights front and rear. Everything from dual rear wheel pickups to class 8 trucks to the bus that takes you to work.
 I was talking to Vikki (pilot of the red Pete on your left) the other night, and she told a story that emphasizes a point I made in my CarSpace Guide Driving With The Big Rigs - specifically item number 4.
Vik said she was hauling a piece of construction equipment on a flatbed. She was slowing down for a traffic light when another vehicle not only changed into her lane, but did so while slowly coasting, causing Vik to really lay into the whoa pedal. At that point, Vikki said she heard the terrifying sound of a tie-down chain snapping due to the change in weight transfer force. "All I could think of was that bulldozer joining me in the cab," she said. After a barrage of bad language into the CB, Vik pulled over and replaced the chain before proceeding.
The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles includes the following stat in its driver's manual:
- stopping distance including reaction time from 55 mph in a car is 190 feet
- stopping distance including reaction time for a loaded tractor-trailer with hot brakes is 430 feet
Before you make that lane change to "jockey for position" at the red light, make sure you have not cut the available stopping room for a much larger vehicle behind you. Unless of course, you like the idea of potentially being pushed into an intersection of cross traffic at speed. Or as in the situation Vikki had, if the other chains had not held, you could cause serious injury or death to a trucker without ever making vehicular contact.
 Yes, that annual assault on the highway by families with freshly-dismissed-from-school kids in the backseat playing those corny road trip games or poking each other until a parent bellows "Don't make me come back there!"
In the current issue of Road King magazine, there's an article reminding truckers that the assault is near, and to be careful of those drivers who may be in over their heads. In the article, Roehl Transport's Brian Hammond, the orientation and driver development manager, mentions something I have been saying for ages... "[Hammond] often wonders why there aren’t similar licensing requirements for driving the RVs as there are for semi-truck drivers." I don't know about you, but when I see some old guy trying to handle a full-size Winnebago on any road, I get FAR away from him. If the stricter CDL is required for people who generally still have their reflexes, you have to wonder why retirees are allowed to pilot similar sized vehicles with just the ability to pay for the thing.
 If you are planning to partake to the roads this summer, keep the same things in mind the article advises truckers. Expect everything. Yes, that car will dart out in front of you. Yes, that van will speed through the puddle and splash water 10 feet in the air before you can close your window. Yes, your kids will only want burgers and fries the whole trip. (OK< that last one really isn't a driving concern, unless you just passed a fast-food joint and the next exit with one is another 80 miles.)
But above all, be patient. If you're sitting in traffic like this, just relax. Everyone around you is also sitting in that traffic and their need to move forward is no greater or lesser than yours.
 One phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me because it never seems to go away... the vehicle in front of you on the highway slows down for some legitimate reason - temporary traffic slowdown, someone ahead slowing for an exit, lane change cut too close - and when the situation is over, the driver doesn't resume their previous speed.
In a couple of spots during my daily commute on I-80, there are exits with very short deceleration and acceleration lanes, so if you're in the right lane, you have to be very careful about entering and exiting traffic. So, there's nothing more maddening when car #1 slows to take an exit with a short lead, car #2 properly slows down to accommodate... car #1 exits... and car #2 is still doing 50 instead of the previous 65. It almost seems as though the driver of #2 thinks the car will resume speed without driver input.
One day, I was behind one of these types... in the center lane. Traffic on both sides is whizzing by. And I gestured forward towards the rolling roadblock with my hand and said aloud "Well, why can't we go?" And with that, I started laughing at my own deadpan delivery of that line. I told my sister about it during one of her visits from Ohio, and it entered her subconscious... she told me sometime later that she caught herself saying it during a similar situation on I-70 in metro Columbus. And she too started laughing at how funny the line is when you say it.
Regardless... it's the pedal on the right. When you slow down for something, you have to get back on the go-stick and get back to the speed you were at... or you'll have a whole line of really unhappy motorists behind you.
 I-78 facing west at 6 pm today in central NJ.
Sun glare sucks. Around the winter/spring and summer/fall season changes, it's pretty bad as the sun is getting lower in the sky - and sunset is right around rush hour. Normally, it's not an issue with me since I don't get off work until 8, and sun glare heading westbound towards home is really only an issue in June. But when you have the extra traffic of rush hour and you crest a curve only to come face to face with a huge fireball, you need to be able to negotiate the road and the traffic safely.
Sun visors block the sun, but not the glare and reflection off the vehicles in front of you (or your hood and dashboard). Which means, a quality pair of sunglasses. Here's a good explanation of polarized vs non-polarized sunglasses and how they affect your forward vision. Another web article on what to look for in sunglasses addresses tints, shapes, and other available features.
If you wear prescription glasses, a quality pair of clip-on or wraparound/"fit-over" sunglasses may serve you better than prescription shades in that when ambient lighting changes, you don't have to worry about finding another pair of glasses while you drive... just flip up or take off the shades and you can see just as clearly with your normal corrective glasses.
And remember, your inability to see in low-sun conditions affects everyone around you - don't be the cause of the next bulletin on the radio traffic report because you couldn't tell how the road curved ahead of you or that the vehicle in front of you is slowing down.
 On your right is the famous Navy Blue Angels precision aircraft team, locked in formation.
Looks cool in the air, doesn't it? Annoying as all get-out on the road. The one thing I hate about my highway commute is people who pretend to be Blue Angels pilots and lock in on your flank matching your speed. it's annoying during the day. it's a real pain at night. And it's that much worse when the dork (like the other night) was on my left rear corner with his misaligned headlight shining straight up into my outside mirror.
This is a dangerous practice no matter what you drive. It can get you killed if you do it alongside a tractor trailer. If you're going to pass another vehicle, hurry up and get 'er done. Lingering alongside another vehicle means neither vehicle has room to make an emergency maneuver. If you find yourself on the right side of a semi, either back off or floor it - get away from the blind side as soon as you can.
If you find yourself regularly matching speed as vehicles in the other lanes, you should be as far to the right as available. You're safer behind someone at the same speed than you will ever be next to them.
The famous closing line of the shift meeting on "Hill Street Blues".
yesterday, it rained most of the day in north NJ. Making my morning trek eastbound on I-80, we came to a crawl around exit 55. It's 4 lanes per side at this point, light steady shower. As we inch along, a state trooper, then not one but two ambulances blast down the shoulder.
Another 5 minutes of inching and the vehicles in the right 2 lanes are now rapidly bailing left. As I reach the scene, several troopers are there, a tractor trailer is pulled over on the shoulder, and in the right-center lane, a car - compressed to about two-thirds of its original size - is being loaded onto a flatbed wrecker.
Ouch.
Reasonable speculation on my part, said car collided with said tractor trailer. No way to tell who might have been at fault, but certainly brings up a point. When the weather is poor, play "keep away" when driving. Slow down and give yourself and other vehicles plenty of extra room... especially on roads and highways that have a high concentration of The Big Rigs. I've seen plenty of small cars dart between lanes in and around semis, and I just brace myself for the possible impact.of those vehicles.
No matter how instantaneous a driver's reaction time could be, a 65-foot 80,000-pound tractor trailer is not coming to a stop anywhere near as quick as a Porsche 911 Turbo. In stats compiled by USDOT and state-sponsored studies, a tractor trailer will not come to a stop from 55 mph for 430 feet... a car makes the same stop in just 193.
Miscalculations often result in cars reduced to two-thirds their original size.
 School has opened around the country - yes, some places started last month, but it's a done deal everywhere now.
My office is a few blocks away from a school, and with my hours, I usually am on my way back to the office after lunch around 2:30-3 pm.
And every September, it seems as though drivers either forget over the summer or are just increasingly becoming less tolerant of school children who aren't picked up by their parents and shuttled door-to-door.
When the school bus driver activates the amber flashing lights, prepare yourself to stop in a matter of seconds... when the bus stops, the flashing lights switch to the red units and the arm swings out, STOP. Don't roll up on the bus at 5 mph, don't ease towards the kids as they cross the street... STOP. And for crying ouyt loud... NEVER PASS THE BUS. Where I used to live, the landlord had a handicapped child, and a small lift-equipped bus came to the front door every day to pick up Josh in his wheelchair. Mind you, this is a tertiary street, one block long. The bus driver, really nice older gent, would stop the bus, lights flashing, and position the lift while the father brought Josh out. I was watching this daily ritual one morning when some genius in a Honda Accord attempted to pass the bus... on the door side. The bus driver, who just missed getting picked off by this loser, absolutely freaked on the car driver.
When i was a kid taking the bus, in the early and mid 70s, this wasn't as bad. But the last couple of years, I have seen people approach a stopped school bus, lights flashing, stop arm out, children actively boarding or getting off, and seen some of the dumbest moves by drivers. One idiot actually blew his horn at the bus immediately in front of him, apparently annoyed that the process wasn't fast enough for his liking.
Same for crosswalks attendaed by crossing guards... when they walk out into the street with their Stop sign raised, you can't proceed. Period.
Bad enough we've lost courtesy to other adults on the road, but give the kids a shot at it, ok?
 This is the corner where I turn onto the main road of my town on my way to I-80. As you can see, the main road is a typical rural two-lane, with a double yellow line. Additionally, behind where I am standing is one of the town's 2 schools - the white sign across the road says "END SCHOOL ZONE".
This morning, I was at this very spot, waiting at th stop sign to turn right. A vehicle was approaching from the main road, right turn signal on, to turn onto the side street. To my surprise and amazement, a full-size van came around this vehicle... completely on the other side of the yellow lines so that he wouldn't have to slow down for the turning vehicle.
Let's look at the dumbness factors here:
1 - this is a gentle S-curve
2 - this is a marked school zone
3 - there is a double yellow line
Occasionally, a local cop sits in the grass at the opposite end of the school yard... alas, there was no officer there today.
Road stripes are all backed by laws unless they are on private property (the exception there being handicapped parking spaces which are backed by civil law). And yet so many drivers are either in such a hurry or so ignorant of driving in general that they treat them as "suggestions" instead of laws that can cost you a ticket. I'm not advocating a police-state mentality where if you creep an inch past the stop line at a traffic light, you deserve a $275 ticket and a 90-day license suspension. But it's both annoying and dangerous to ignore what these stripes are for.
Lane discipline on highways is a big problem. For those of us who drive larger/wider vehicles, we often have to deal with people who drift onto (or over) the lane stripes, giving us no margin for error. Tractor trailers sway... it's the laws of physics. But whose fault is it when some econobox driven by Charlie Oblivious (remember him from the Keep Right Except to Pass entry?) wanders over the stripes while he tries to dial his cell phone and chug some concoction from Starbucks, and gets spanked by the wagging tail of a semi that is swaying but never leaves its lane? I say Charlie deserves the redesigned fender he gets.
Not a sudden thunderstorm that blows through in 20 minutes... but a good all-day rain.
It's been a law in New Jersey for over 10 years to turn all your lights on whenever sky conditions require windshield wipers. And yet far too many people don't bother. With tire spray, rain, and fog, it's REALLY easy to come up on some small car (especially silver/gray/white) with almost no warning it was there because the driver is running "dark".
Check my CarSpace guide titled Driving in Bad Weather - See and Be Seen to avoid getting rear-ended when you least expect it.
Is there really an excuse to miss an exit? 
I understand that people get lost or travel to unfamiliar areas. My first trip to Dallas, I passed the exit I needed... twice. Any time you see out of state license plates, a chartered motorcoach from some other area of the country, or a tractor-trailer with a flatbed full of stuff you know isn't made anywhere near where you are, there's a chance that the driver is marking new territory. Even then, these drivers should be more concerned with staying in the right lane and watching signs.
No... this is directed at people who screw up on their commute, the drive they make every day.
These are usually the people so intent on doing something besides driving that they realize at the last second that they are upon their exit and two or three lanes away. Scary to see what some of these people will try. Best I've witnessed so far: car in the left of 4 lanes damn near made a full right turn and made the right-hand exit with inches to spare before the ramp had physically separated from the highway. The funniest had to be the guy who approached the GW Bridge on the upper level lanes, decided that was too much traffic, and BACKED UP to the split for the lower level. A NJ state trooper who saw this actually got on his external PA speaker and yelled "HEY!!!!" The trooper then sped forward down the shoulder to where he knew was a driveway/crossover ("for official use only") and waited for the idiot. I was heard to laugh as I saw the offending vehicle pulled into the crossover and that trooper was yelling.
This could easily become a cell-phone rant, but it's not. It's called planning your trip. When I drive to work, I know what exits I need and what lane to be in before I leave home. On my way home, I'm generally in the proper lane 15 miles before my exit (unless I really need to pass someone or there's construction that closes lanes). It's a matter of paying attention, knowing where you are, and keeping the distractions to the absolute minimum.
So if you miss your exit... please... just go to the next one and turn around!
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