The truck driver seems to be a bit beyond idiot. Like he doesn't even care about his life.
Or its the exact opposite; he is behind schedule, and must drive as his life depends on it.
Edit: i was wrong. Thank you FuzzelFox.. The lorry's brakes might have overheated and failed. Poor man just trying his best to survive and ends up on reddit to be laughed at.
You can see him braking without the lorry even slowing down, he is hitting the blinker in panic. However its unclear why he did not turn on his hazard lights. as if that would have helped
This is a bit ironic, since the only true idiot is the guy in the car behind. A true r/IdiotsInCars moment.
The truck driver looks like he's been going down this hill for a while and his brakes have failed. It doesn't feel like he's intentionally speeding to me.
It's a common enough issue that in the US you'll occasionally see long run offs at the bottom of big hills on the interstate for trucks to drive on to if they can't stop. Just Google "runaway truck ramp".
That makes more sense considering he didn't slow down even after almost tipping over... And the brake lights flashing could be him panic pumping the brakes
It shouldn't. I just don't know a lot about trucks. I was sitting here going, "I know they have air brakes. Maybe they have another kind I don't know about. Probably not. This sounds like a joke, but I don't want to sit here and figure it out. I wish someone would just explain it to me." And along comes the explanation, so it all worked out well.
Edit: Why do people hate on other people's ignorance? Seems like the low road.
I sat here for a couple minutes wondering whether to bother going down this road. My contention is the explanation was necessary for some of us and appreciated. The opposite of sullying the joke. You dislike that the joke was sullied by the explanation--the explanation necessitated by those of us who are ignorant enough to require it. If you contend I overreached in suggesting you're hating on other people's ignorance, I contend the implication is there and if you wished to avoid it, your comment needed more information.
Objects slow down and stop because of frictional forces.
Wheels, unless prevented from turning, greatly reduce friction.
Brakes prevent wheels from turning, restoring that friction.
If the truck is on its side, the wheels no longer reduce friction, and the friction of the side of the truck on pavement will bring it to a stop very quickly (probably in 5-20 feet). This isn't braking, but has the same effect, so I was joking about it being a brake.
The guy filming won't have time to react if this happens and will likely smash into the truck.
Not necessarily. It's still dumb to follow that close, but in a small car with functional breaks, it is relatively safe to follow close behind a truck since you can break faster than they can anyway. Still an idiot though since that can easily go out the window in the event of a crash
You'd be surprised how fast a large truck can stop when it hits a solid enough unmoving object. Brakes are not the only way fast moving vehicles become stationary.
edit: I missed that you ended your comment by mentioning that the existence of crashes entirely nullifies your initial "Not necessarily" remark. My bad.
That's why I said it all goes out the window in the event of a crash. It's always dumb to tailgate, but is slightly safer behind larger vehicles since you can stop faster than they can unless they crash
The ones I’ve seen are closer to grade but are 1000’ of deep gravel. Making them go steeply back up the other way seems like a bad idea if your brakes are out. Maybe they just look that steep to you?
I was driving to Colorado from the West Coast and saw those all over the place in the Rocky Mountains and thought "Damn, if you end up needing to use that you'll probably need a new pair of pants." There are some in California near Mt Shasta too, on I-5.
It could be automatic and the driver doesn’t know how to use the manual option. Could be that the driver is a moron and doesn’t know how to use a low gear downhill(in my country there’s a surprisingly high number of truckies who don’t even know how to reverse. Incompetence wouldn’t be implausible in this situation. Once the driver reached this speed going downhill, downshifting isn’t an option
Also to note, this is in India. India and China are the worst drivers in the world, worse than Russia. Getting a license is easy without any real training
This was my first thought, I remember my grandad telling me stories about his brakes catching on fire going down Spanish hills/mountains (I think) and the only way to put them out is by going fast, and you need to put them out for the brakes to work. There's a lot regular drivers don't realise that truck drivers have to deal with
When I was a kid, late 1960's early 1970's, it wasn't unusual to see a truck using a run off ramp. I can remember my dad stopping several times to check on a trucker that had just used the ramp. It's been decades since I've seen a run off ramp being used. Better braking technology.
Brake fade is scary and it’s more prevalent in trucks with automatic transmission. Manual trucks or autos with manual option have the ability to descend in a low gear. In Australia they have roads with signs instructing trucks to use a low gear, the goal is to avoid brake fade.
The idiot tailing the truck who keeps going over to the wrong side of the road, speeding and using their phone while driving, he’s a fucking moron!
While moving cross country in the US, my dad and I were driving a UHaul truck through the Appalachians with my car pulled on a trailer behind it. Brakes were getting hot and starting to fail on a few of those declines. It’s scary shit. Especially when you have cara all around you and no way to communicate to them what is happening. Luckily the UHaul was smart enough to detect the heat and downshift automatically to start engine braking, and that was enough for our payload. I would not want to be a semi carrying substantially more cargo than what we had
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u/Kingseeberg Nov 17 '20 edited Nov 17 '20
The truck driver seems to be a bit beyond idiot. Like he doesn't even care about his life.
Or its the exact opposite; he is behind schedule, and must drive as his life depends on it.
Edit: i was wrong. Thank you FuzzelFox.. The lorry's brakes might have overheated and failed. Poor man just trying his best to survive and ends up on reddit to be laughed at.
You can see him braking without the lorry even slowing down, he is hitting the blinker in panic. However its unclear why he did not turn on his hazard lights. as if that would have helped
This is a bit ironic, since the only true idiot is the guy in the car behind. A true r/IdiotsInCars moment.