Safe Driving Tips Around Tractor Trailers

As my regular readers know, I drive a tractor trailer for work. It is a good job that pays very well. However, the stress that comes with it is sometimes unbearable. It never ceases to amaze me, how a person driving a car would cross the double yellow lines and pass a tractor trailer about to make a left turn. Yet, it happens to me almost daily.

So, I am going to take a few minutes and reiterate some of the basic defensive driving skills everyone should have learned in Drivers Education way back when in high school.

Trucks are designed to carry products long distances; they are not designed to be as maneuverable as cars. Trucks have longer stopping and accelerating distances, a wider turning radius, and weigh more. On multi-lane highways tractor-trailers usually stay in the right lane to help the flow of local traffic to avoid congesting the flow of faster moving traffic. Staying in the right lane also increases the truck driver's options if he or she has to switch lanes in order to avoid a dangerous situation or an accident.

Do you know what the safe stopping distance of a fully loaded tractor-trailer is? At fifty-five miles per hour it is well over one and a half football fields on dry flat ground. A car can stop in about one hundred and fifty feet in the same conditions.

A red sign with eight sides means that you are supposed to stop and make sure it is clear before you drive through the intersection. A red sign in a triangular shape means to yield. Now, stop signs and yield signs are very simple to understand. This is to make sure you don't drive your car in front of another vehicle. Yet, daily, while I am driving an eighty thousand pound vehicle, people ignore these signs, dart in front of me as if I was not there, and then give me the single finger salute for blowing my air horn at them as I try not to hit them with my brakes locked up.