Recently, I was driving on I-5 in the Pacific Northwest. As is usual for this time of the year, it was raining, and the road was slick. The sky was gray with clouds.
Time and time again, big rigs would come up behind my vehicle at high speed, then race past me, spraying water. I was alarmed, and a little fearful.
Does this sound familiar to you?
Because it happens all the time.
I am often alarmed by the combination of high speed and limited semi-truck following distances.
What is the proper semi-truck following distance?
It can seem as though semi-truck following distances are irrelevant to truckers. Or that they have no knowledge of or respect for proper safety cushions.
Safety cushion: the proper following distance to avoid a crash if stopping is necessary.
For a single-trailer semi-truck following distance is about 4 seconds. Driver training is so critical to this concept of the safety cushion. So why does it seems as though driver training is lacking in this area?
We must continue to push for better training of truck drivers and accountability. It is only through accountability that changes are possible.
There are still no national standards for training new semi-truck drivers.
How long does it take to learn to drive a semi-truck … safely?
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