Stop Rear-ending Our Trucks!

SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:

bobzilla said:  Only drive at night on deserted highways 

On a dark, desert highway.  With Cool Whip in your hair.

Only if there's warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. 

One habit I have retained after 45  years of driving manual transmissions is,while idling at a stoplight, I watch my mirror and when someone is approaching from the rear I tap my brakes two or three times so my brake lights flash and then keep my foot on the brake pedal until the person is stopped.  

I think people who see a vehicle without its brake lights on thinks it is moving. 

It just doesn't register in distracted driver land that the Miata, pickup truck, whatever,  is stopped, that manual transmission cars are out there.  

SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:

bobzilla said:  Only drive at night on deserted highways 

On a dark, desert highway.  With Cool Whip in your hair.

Warm smell of colitis rising up through the air?

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:

bobzilla said:  Only drive at night on deserted highways 

On a dark, desert highway.  With Cool Whip in your hair.

Warm smell of colitis rising up through the air?

Do you mean coitus?  Or colitis?  Odors are completely different...

In reply to jharry3 :

nice catch.....

Have you considered looking at the other drivers involved in the crashes? (not the rear enders, I'm talking about your own employees who are driving when they are rear ended). 

Can you get them some better training and situational awareness? 

I know getting rear ended can seem like it is 100% someone else's fault, but the reality is that in almost all crashes, both drivers share at least some of the blame. 

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

Of the dozens of a rear end collisions I've responded to I can think of maybe three where the rear ended vehicle carried any blame.

In reply to ShawnG :

People don't see school bus's.   That huge yellow thing with flashing lights.

bobzilla said:

SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:

bobzilla said:  Only drive at night on deserted highways 

On a dark, desert highway.  With Cool Whip in your hair.

Only if there's warm smell of colitas rising up through the air. 

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Had a woman back out of her driveway into my stopped school bus.  She was outside of her car as I pulled up to dop a student off

In reply to jharry3 :

I read somewhere, FiSt owners manual ?,to keep your foot on the brake pedal for just that reason.

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

Of the dozens of a rear end collisions I've responded to I can think of maybe three where the rear ended vehicle carried any blame.

 

This. Of the friends of mine that have been rear ended not a single one of them could have done anything to prevent it. One was stopped on the interstate pinned between cars when a box truck plowed into the car behind her smashing her Saturn into a pancake. Most were stoped at a light and had been stopped for some time when they were hit. 

First accident I ever witnessed, a buddy and I were cutting the last classes of the day to go meet my gf and see some girl that she wanted to introduce to him.  We got off campus and I stopped for gas.  He overshot and pulled into the abandoned bank parking lot nextdoor, then started to back up to come over to me.  I hear squealing tires and watch a '90s Civic drive under his mildly lifted Dodge Dakota that had a homemade bumper front and rear.  Rear was 1/4" steel, right angles throughout.  

I get there just as he puts his truck in drive and gets off the Civic, dragging the hood off with his bumper.  He walks around back and kicks the hood off from where it lodged onto the bumper, looks at the bumper, goes back to his cab and returns with a can of black spray paint and as he's respraying the scratch he asks the guy who drove into him if he was ok.

From the length of the tiremarks where the Civic locked up the cop estimated that the guy was going 35-40MPH or so.  Civic owner stood there with the motor torn from all mounts, leaking oil, coolant, and transmission fluid and asked "do you think I can drive it home?"

Yup, can't fix stupid.

Wally (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Robbie (Forum Supporter) :

Of the dozens of a rear end collisions I've responded to I can think of maybe three where the rear ended vehicle carried any blame.

 

I'm pretty sure most places automatically assign 100% blame on the person behind, since unless the person in front backed into them, they were doing some combination of too fast, too close and not paying attention.

I do however recall one case where someone stopped around a blind corner to let some ducks cross the road or some such thing and a couple bikers came around the corner and hit the car, one of them dying. She was eventually charged and convicted.

In reply to RX8driver :

She was really held responsible? That sounds odd.  I experienced situations like that often when commuting through central NJ deer country: coming around a corner to find a car stopped in the middle of the road for no obvious reason - until you watch the herd of deer bound across the road in front of them. But as I know this is a regular occurrence, I keep my speed in check when approaching blind curves. Because you simply never know when you'll come around that corner and find something (car, deer, etc.) stopped in the middle of the road. 

As far as the rear-ending problem, I also suggest a prominent 3rd brake light, since the ones on trucks seem to be after-thoughts if they are fitted with one at all. More drivers than we would care to admit subconsciously look for that light. 

I also do the rear view mirror check.  

Didn't help me in Texas while waiting to merge on a busy highway ramp.  I was in my old Lexus IS and looked in my mirror to see an Infinity Q56 way back on the ramp but moving quickish.  
 

I looked again a few seconds later and she was 15ft off my bumper doing 50 on her phone with no signs of stopping.  I had just enough time to get my hands off the wheel and foot off the brakes before she pounded me.  Lexus was totaled with a grand Cherokee's oh the hood that was in front of me. 
 

The entire time as I'm helping injured people in front of me out of their cars and checking on them She never gets off the phone or out of the car.  I made sure all this got written into the accident report.  Just couldn't believe she never even hung up the phone she the office was talking to her.

The rear-end incidents I've looked at in the past few years have all involved our vehicles being stopped at traffic lights or stop signs, with most being behind other vehicles.  These were not panic stops on the part of our drivers, or blocking the road in unexpected places.  

Additional third (fourth?) brake lights might be an area for improvement.  

When I was in the paving business road crews were hit regularly. Like once a month or so, usually at night. The giant, monster paving equipment surrounded by billions of flood lights, other dump trucks, guys with flashlights and flags...those things.  The company started running a follow truck on each crew, usually an older F250 flat bed, that had giant plastic crush blocks hung off the back. They were probably a 24" tall and about 6' long and slightly wider than the truck. They were similar construction to the ones you see on bridge abutments sometimes. All the truck did was follow the equipment at about 2 car lengths back with a ton flashing lights and take the hit when someone drove up their ass. They had a couple get hit at over 60mph estimated.

That large a system isn't practical on anything else, but maybe someone makes a smaller absorbent system that would help minimize impact severity for your personnel 

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to RX8driver :

She was really held responsible? That sounds odd.  I experienced situations like that often when commuting through central NJ deer country: coming around a corner to find a car stopped in the middle of the road for no obvious reason - until you watch the herd of deer bound across the road in front of them. But as I know this is a regular occurrence, I keep my speed in check when approaching blind curves. Because you simply never know when you'll come around that corner and find something (car, deer, etc.) stopped in the middle of the road. 

As far as the rear-ending problem, I also suggest a prominent 3rd brake light, since the ones on trucks seem to be after-thoughts if they are fitted with one at all. More drivers than we would care to admit subconsciously look for that light. 

She even lost the appeal

Rear facing red led strobe light hooked to the brake lights.

ultraclyde (Forum Supporter) said:

When I was in the paving business road crews were hit regularly. Like once a month or so, usually at night. The giant, monster paving equipment surrounded by billions of flood lights, other dump trucks, guys with flashlights and flags...those things.  The company started running a follow truck on each crew, usually an older F250 flat bed, that had giant plastic crush blocks hung off the back. They were probably a 24" tall and about 6' long and slightly wider than the truck. They were similar construction to the ones you see on bridge abutments sometimes. All the truck did was follow the equipment at about 2 car lengths back with a ton flashing lights and take the hit when someone drove up their ass. They had a couple get hit at over 60mph estimated.

That large a system isn't practical on anything else, but maybe someone makes a smaller absorbent system that would help minimize impact severity for your personnel 

My wife is in the highway construction business and "bumper trucks" are a requirement for every job. They're a little bigger and further back than what you describe and usually placed at the start of the job. It's amazing how often people hit construction equipment. It really lowers your opinion of the average driver, and half of them are worse than average.

How about a different approach?

Your vehicles are expendable. Your people aren't. 

Switch to a minivan that'll sacrifice itself more effectively than your pickup trucks did. It has a unibody with no difficult-to-crush frame behind the cabin, and continuous structure all the way back.

My disco is on it's third rear bumper.  I used to think it was because the brake lights are so high up that people didn't notice them, but I see that is not the case.

As for construction equipment, I did once watch a brand new Jag plow into one of those trailers with the flashing lights warning that the lane was closed on the PA Turnpike.  I could never figure out how somebody could run straight into a device that was built to warn people of it's existence.

Keith Tanner said:

ultraclyde (Forum Supporter) said:

When I was in the paving business road crews were hit regularly. Like once a month or so, usually at night. The giant, monster paving equipment surrounded by billions of flood lights, other dump trucks, guys with flashlights and flags...those things.  The company started running a follow truck on each crew, usually an older F250 flat bed, that had giant plastic crush blocks hung off the back. They were probably a 24" tall and about 6' long and slightly wider than the truck. They were similar construction to the ones you see on bridge abutments sometimes. All the truck did was follow the equipment at about 2 car lengths back with a ton flashing lights and take the hit when someone drove up their ass. They had a couple get hit at over 60mph estimated.

That large a system isn't practical on anything else, but maybe someone makes a smaller absorbent system that would help minimize impact severity for your personnel 

My wife is in the highway construction business and "bumper trucks" are a requirement for every job. They're a little bigger and further back than what you describe and usually placed at the start of the job. It's amazing how often people hit construction equipment. It really lowers your opinion of the average driver, and half of them are worse than average.

Georgia safety standards are somewhat lower than other states, as everyone is currently aware. LOL.

In reply to 84FSP :

You didn't throw her phone into the sun?  Pretty sure it'd be justifiable.