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I've seen the articles about a fuel truck driver who was cut off by another truck driver in NSW and was fined $1,636. The reason is they were caught by a Safety T-cam at a distance of about 15.99m from the truck in front. At first glance it is really rough if someone cuts you off and you get a fine. However, if you inspect the video and Google maps, you have to wonder why the fine was dismissed. In fact, the headline for the article was "Common sense prevails – truck driver has $1636 fine overturned in court - Big Rigs".
https://youtube.com/watch?v=B1NLW1Awvkk&si=ehZqTBi3F37urDVe Unless I'm missing something, and I could easily be missing something, to me the measurements don't add up. If you check Google maps for this location (-33.54149394495143, 150.16565633916358) you'll see a few things. The truck was exiting a 40km/h zone with an 80km/h zone coming up. Based on the video which appears to be slowed to half the speed, the truck may have been travelling around 60km/h and accelerating to return to 80km/h. The start of the video is about 245m from the intersection. The truck in front enters the intersection when this truck was about 145m from the intersection. According to the NSW government's site, it takes 44m at 40km/h and 90m at 60km/h for a double B truck to stop. That means there's plenty of time for this truck to stop if required. Further, the location of the Safety T-cam where this truck was pinged 15.99m behind the truck that had cut out, is around 320m from where we can say the truck cutting out was clearly evident and had entered the main road. The intersection is about 173m from the Safety T-cam. That I would think is plenty of time for the trailing truck to have increased the gap between trucks to the required 60m. Yes, it's a dog of an act to cut others off. It happens to all of us. But that's part of driving on the road. For me this is a very interesting situation and shows you can be lucky by going to court. As I said, if I'm missing something I'd like to know. Kelvin PS. I'm not fussed the driver of the truck had the fine overturned. In fact, it's their good luck. What interests me is to analyse the situation and learn by what happens to others on the road so I can be a better, more prepared driver. It is said around 18% of deaths on country roads involve trucks and that is disconcerting given the ratio of cars to trucks. |
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