How safety technology affects the trucking industry and improves road safety
Whether you are for or against the legalization of marijuana—and I am not taking a position here— no one can dispute that driving a car after the use of marijuana is dangerous. Which means it's even more dangerous to drive a big rig while under the influence of marijuana. How do you identify a stoned [...]
The ELD Law An Electronic Logging Device (ELD) is a computer record of the truck's mileage and time on the road. As of December 18, 2017, long-haul commercial truckers are required to use an ELD instead of a paper log. What does that mean for truckers? The new law means their time will be tracked by [...]
What is FCAM? We throw around a lot of trucking safety terms. The talk can get very technical. For example: NHTSA identifies forward collision avoidance and mitigation technology (FCAM) technologies as the systems that combine forward collision warning alert signals with collision mitigation braking. There's a much easier explanation. 1) Radar detects a pending crash; and 2) Automatic braking prevent it. [...]
The idea is that semi-trucks and other heavy commercial vehicles shouldn't be able to speed on U.S. roads and highways. In August, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration jointly proposed that all new trucks, buses, and commercial passenger vehicles that weigh more than 26,000 pounds have speed limiting devices [...]
A couple of years ago, a Walmart truck rear-ended a limo van at a ridiculously high rate of speed. One man was killed, and several others seriously injured—including actor Tracy Morgan. That crash was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This slide from the NTSB’s presentation shows the crushed interior of the limo [...]
A tech start-up is betting on an autonomous truck hitting the road in the U.S. —and soon. The former Google engineers at Otto designed a $30,000 kit that can retrofit semi-trucks with new autonomous driving technology. The autonomous truck package includes extra cameras, radar, and lights sensors. A computer gathers all of that information, adds [...]
This is a “forward collision avoidance and mitigation braking” system. Volvo shows how the auto-braking system could prevent thousands of rear-end truck crashes a year When radar and sensors detect a slow-moving vehicle or stopped car ahead, the “F-CAM” system warns the truck driver. If the driver doesn’t brake, the system takes over [...]
The first self-driving semi truck in the U.S. is officially on the road in Nevada. Freightliner, the creator of the autonomous commercial truck, compares the Highway Pilot system to the autopilot on commercial airplanes. The semi-truck can be switched to autonomous autopilot on the highway, and it uses stereoscopic cameras and radar sensors. The truck can [...]
