I don’t have a driver’s license, but I’ve done a fair bit of practice driving and if you put me behind the wheel of a car I can take it from point A to point B without accidents. I’ve also ridden a moped a little and a motorcycle even less, and steered a powerboat for a few minutes in the mid-80s. That is the extent of my experience with motor vehicles.
Which of the following vehicles would I be able to operate if I were dropped behind the controls without instruction, provided the engine was running?
A tank?
A bulldozer?
A forklift?
A crane?
An armoured personnel carrier?
A Zamboni?
An 18-wheeler?
Assuming you want to use them for their intended purpose, with absolutely no training:
Tank: No way. I’ve only been inside of busted tanks on the range, but I imagine it’d take quite a bit of training to be able to figure out the firing system. I’m guessing they drive very similar to a…
Bulldozer: Operate? Sure. You drive with your feet on a lot of them, so it’s a bit odd at first. But I’ve been put on one to drive across the range without too many problems. It shouldn’t take to long to figure out the hydraulics, similar to a…
Forklift: No problem. Probably the second easiest on the list.
Crane: Zero instruction? Probably not. But I’ve been around enough cranes that I’d be able to set it up (you still need to do this even if the engine is running). Another concern is reading the lift charts to make sure you’re not going to tilt your crane or buckle the mast.
Armored personnel carrier: The ones I’ve been in aren’t much different than a regular truck, as far as their driving controls.
Zamboni: No clue. One could probably figure it out, but I’m guessing that it’s more complicated than a forklift. It’d probably take quite a few tries to get it right.
18 wheeler: This one’s tough. If you can drive a stick, you can probably get one going. But a lot of larger transmissions use both a transmission gear and an axle gear, both of which must be changed. It’d take awhile to figure out the order they go in. IIRC, it’s not as simple as 1-1 1-2 1-3… 2-1 2-2… Good luck driving it uphill when you’re first figuring it out, especially if it’s fully loaded.
I drove a bulldozer at a job for a few months. You steer with pedals controlled by your feet and the throttle and transmission are controlled by hand controlled lever. It took 10 minutes of instruction and at least 2 hours of practice before I had any real confidence driving the thing. There were levers to control the blade, PTO, and rear mounted winch too. Learning to back up and steer the right direction is the hardest part.
What kind of crane? I’ve driven a gantry crane (unlicensed, a long time ago, so I past the statute of limitations for prosecution), and they are pretty easy to drive – one lever for each dimension, making three in all.
Since the OP was about vehicles, I assumed they were talking about a truck mounted crane. Which isn’t much different than a gantry crane in operation, except it’s in polar coordinates instead of cartesian, and it might have an extra control for boom extension.
Airplane: No way. Newbs can’t maintain altitude or maintain even an approximate heading. Even on the ground, you taxi steering with your feet, and that is tricky at first. Take offs and landings take tens of hours to achieve competency. Same with navigation…If you can’t find an airport, you have a real problem.
Drive them around, basically. Get from one place to another without running them into a wall or another vehicle. If I can fire the cannon, polish the ice or lift something with a crane or forklift that’s a nice bonus.
For a forklift (assuming the forks are up off the ground a bit and it only has one gear) it’s pretty easy. The only real differences are going to be that it has two brake pedels (for this experiment it won’t matter which one you use) and the rear wheels turn intsead of the front, so your turns are alot tighter. Other then that, it’s easier then driving a car.
I learned to takeoff and land three times on my first lesson. That was obviously with an instructor on board though so it probably doesn’t count. However, there are short courses for spouses and other family members of pilots who are passengers regularly. There are a few of those that successfully landed a plane when the pilot became incapacitated. They obviously don’t follow normal procedures but they got the plane down successfully.
Truck mounted cranes generally have two cabs, or at leas a cab and an operating pod. The truck isn’t any different than a regular one. If you’re just driving around, only the tracked vehicles and the 18 wheeler will be significantly different from a normal truck.
I happen to have an APC (well, the army actually owns it, but I have the keys) and I was pretty much handed a license and keys and that was it. No lessons or anything. I managed to teach myself how to drive it in about 10 minutes, so armored personnel carrier should be a yes.
Also given how similar army vehicles tend to be, I would be willing to be I could get in an M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank and drive it, though anything inside the turret would probably be a mystery to me.
If you’re basically OK with shifting gears, a farm tractor isn’t too difficult, unless they’ve changed radically from a couple decades ago. Differences from operating your car or truck - hand throttle rather than, or sometimes in addition to, a gas pedal (a lever on the steering column). You typically operate at such low RPM, that you can simply leave the hand throttle set while you shift gears. Split brake pedal that allows you brake only one side if you want - step on both at once to brake normally. Braking one side allows you to turn tightly by locking one rear wheel and spinning around on it. I remember a neighbor having one with a hand clutch, too. It had an enormous throw, and made slipping the clutch very easy.
Safety is a different story. The rollover danger with farm tractors comes from people attempting to operate on uneven or slippery terrain past the limits of the machine, pulling something that’s decided it ain’t gonna move, or turning while moving too fast, particularly with those three-point designs. Stability just ain’t that great.
Concerning the separate brakes yabob discussed, I’ve operated a lot of forklifts that have a pin that you can run through both brakes so they operate as one. You use it when you’re driving, as opposed to operating (when you’re just driving you don’t need to make very tight turns).
Dozers vary a lot. For instance, in the ones I’ve operated, steering can be accomplished by stepping on one of two pedals (which act as clutches for each track), pulling on one of two levers, or turning the left thumbstick. Sometimes the throttle is operated by pulling a lever to a fixed position for the maximum engine speed you want, and pushing a decelerator pedal (opposite of a car) to slow it down while sometimes it’s just hand-controlled. And sometimes you shift gears with a shifter similar to what’s found in a car, while some newer ones just require twisting the left thumbstick. Older ones tend to have clutch pedals while newer ones don’t. I think all the dozers I’ve been in though had a right thumbstick for operating the blade. God forbid you have to find a master switch on the thing, which you won’t if it’s already running. Really, none of them are extraordinarily hard to figure out, but there’s no one way to operate a dozer.
I’ve never had the joy of operating an 18 wheeler, but I have driven several old dump trucks. While they all had axle gears, there was at least one that couldn’t be shifted while moving. (It was like a 4WD pickup truck. You put it in either high or low and leave it there until stopped.) Some had an additional floor shifter for high, low, and reverse, while others had a hydraulic button on the shifter. I only remember one that you were supposed to shift between low and high in motion, and you went through all the low gears before going through all the high gears.
I couldn’t imagine someone as fresh to driving as the original poster jumping in a dump truck and taking off though. At least in the old ones I drove, you had to either double-clutch it or shift without using the clutch. This is a difficult task. I had been driving for a few years and even with an explanation, it took me a little while to get shifting down. Other than that, they’re probably easier to drive than an automobile with a manual transmission.
That makes sense. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in one, but it does prove the point that it’d be difficult for somebody with no training to figure it out immediately. It does, however remind me of an amusing anecdote. Feel free to skip, I didn’t realize it was this long:
I was driving a wrecker, which is a crane mounted to a deuce-and-a-half. The crane was hooked up to a multi-ton concrete block, and we were trying to move it. The crane wasn’t powerful enough to lift it, so I was instructed to get in the truck and try to drag the block. It was pretty stupid in retrospect, but since the attachment point was so high above the center of gravity of the truck, as I started to drive away, the front end of my truck lifted about six feet off the ground.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I must have pushed the clutch in out of instinct. Then, as the deuce was rolling backwards, I popped the clutch to try to slow it. Turns out I had stalled out at the peak, and pop started the diesel engine as I let it back down.
I was then instructed to try again. :rolleyes: I put it in first, let go of the clutch, and BAM! right into the front of the block. “What the *#@&!!!1!” I got yelled at pretty good, and kicked out of the cab so the foreman could drive. So, he does the exact same thing! Turns out, I had somehow started the engine backwards, and there was smoke coming out of the air intake. I don’t remember how we fixed it, but it was very odd knowing I was in first gear while the truck was going backwards.
Forklifts can differ quite a bit. We have a propane forklift at work that has a steering wheel, brakes and a gas pedal – should be easy to drive.
When I was younger I worked at a warehouse with a lot of electric forklifts where you stood at an angle facing approx 10 o’clock and near your right hand was joystick which controlled which direction you went (2 o’clock was forward, 8 o’clock backward). Steering was done by turning a little knob on a plate. It wasn’t unlike a steering wheel but it was located to your left, in the back of the forklift. It didn’t take long to learn but could certainly be a pain for someone who never drives.
No idea how a tank is driven, but I’ve read that one of the great technological advances brought to the table by the American M4 Shermans was automatic transmission, making them much easier to drive and requiring less training than their German opponents.
So that brings up another question: What kind of tank? New or Old? American or German?
Hell, if it’s one of the old WWI Mark I tanks, then the answer is straight up no. IIRC, they required a crew of 10, something like half of which had to oil the machinery as they rolled along.
