Okay fine. I’ll stay back 200 feet, but what if I’m pulled up behind you at a traffic light, and as you pull away a piece of gravel falls off the top of your load and cracks my glass. Then will you assume liability?
Have any of y’all ever had this happen (200 feet away or not) and did you seek any financial/legal recourse?
Nothing against dump truck drivers, but I suspect that they get paid by the load and so have an incentive to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, and this is how most of those little windshield cracks happen.
With the IANAL waiver firmly in place, what say the Dopers?
Hmmmmm… interesting. Most truck drivers I know are pretty good about not overloading their trucks, so as not to drop material on cars behind them. That being said, I’d say they’re DEFINITELY liable for damage. Did you catch the name of the hauling company and where they’re located? That’d be worth a phone call and/or letter to them, notifying them of the incident and asking for them to pay your deductible. They may reply with ‘nanny nanny boo boo, you can’t prove anything’, but it’s at least worth a shot.
I think that maybe you don’t understand the reason for maintaining 200’. This actually has nothing to do with falling debris, it has to do with braking distance. Fully loaded trucks actually brake very well; lots of weight and mucho rubber on pavement make for shorter stopping distances. Especially now with most new cars having anti-lock brakes (which don’t stop shorter, just with more control). The other, not obvious, point to mention is that trucks block your view and so the only indication that you have is the brake lights on the truck; you can’t look ahead and see the traffic jam coming. Lightly or unloaded trucks take a quite a bit more distance to stop, but, as you cannot always readily tell whether a truck is loaded or not, play it safe by keeping your distance.
Number 1 rule for right of way? Mass and velocity.
Your explanation sounds pretty good, Quasimodo. But all the signs I’ve seen are worded to imply that you have to stay back to prevent broken windshields. They usually say something like, “Stay back 200 feet, not responsible for cracked windshield.” Maybe they just need to hire some better writers for the signs?
Anyway, I would’ve thought that the extra weight of the truck would offset the traction and cause the truck to stop rather poorly. But, I have no actual experience and I couldn’t find many real numbers in a quick search. I did find http://www.sentry.com/trucks/sharing/strbrake.shtml ,which says that tractor-trailers take far longer to stop than cars. But I don’t know if any of that data applies to the kinds of trucks we’re discussing here.
Of course, you are absolutely right about staying back in general. If you get too close to a truck, the driver may not even be able to see you in his/her mirrors.
I once saw several gravel trucks that had signs saying, “Keep back 127 feet”. 127? Exactly? How did they come up with that one?
Uhhh, got a cite for that? I would have thought the opposite was true. It certainly feels that way in my car: it takes longer to stop my car with five people in it than it does to stop with only the driver.
Enigma42,
Don’t sweat the name mix-up, it was obvious who you meant. As to where i got the information: i am a holder of a CDL for single, double, and triple trailers as well as Haz-Mats and tankers. The information that i wrote of came from the studying that i had to do in order to pass the various tests required. One of the things stressed was that loaded trailers stop pretty damn short. Unloaded trailers on the other hand can be likened to a pig on ice.
From personal experience i can attest to the longer stopping distances for anti-lock brakes (logically this makes sense as, should the breaks lock up, the sensors release the breaks momentarily, as skidding tires are harder to control than rolling tires.) The best way to stop any vehicle in the shortest length is to apply brakes until they lock up and then ease off just a little (this is supposedly something that every race car driver will tell you).
Too, you have to look at the difference between ‘straight’ vehicles and tractor-trailers. As you apply brakes in your car, assuming you are travelling forward, the nose drops and the majority of the force is on the front tires (every mechanic that i have ever talked to tells me that front brakes are replaced twice as often as rear brakes for this reason) thus, 4 tires don’t handle the breaking equally.
Other points mentioned in the thread are well stated: if the driver can’t see you he can’t look out for you. And of course the whole broken windshield thing should always be a consideration.
Lastly, it is entirely possible that the books i read in preparation for my tests were in error, or maybe it read loaded trucks stop faster than unloaded trucks. Hell, they were written by the government and are suspect for that alone. Unfortunately, i no longer have them.
I thought this might need to be re-stated since my issue isn’t stopping time, but debris falling from the back of an obviously overloaded truck as we were stopped at a light. Unless y’all meant you wanted me to be 200 feet behind the truck at that time as well? Don’t think the other drivers would go for that one!
