The View from the Cab of a Turning Truck
I’ve written a lot about what bicyclists need to know about trucks. Why? Because every year, bicyclists are killed by turning trucks.
Truck drivers have a lot working against their seeing and avoiding a cyclist who rides into a bad spot. Yet trucks are big and easy for cyclists to see and avoid. Cyclists just need to know what to do to stay safe.
Getting out the word about turning trucks
Here’s the finished product, a four-minute video:
What about technology?
Many cycling advocates insist that the problem of truck blind spots can be solved with technology. I asked driver Bob Dolan: What kind of video camera technology is out there? Is it helpful? Does it make things harder or easier?
Here is his response:
We have side-mounted cameras on our tractors that will shoot out both sides and look at traffic on either side. Some trucks have rear-facing cameras. The issue you’re going to see with some of those cameras is you’re looking at a lot of information to process… you have all these screens in front of you and you’re trying to drive a truck… that becomes a distraction. So no matter what you’re adding to the vehicle, you’re adding more distractions to the driver.
A lot of the advanced warning devices on a tractor trailer — because of the size and complexity of the truck being able to bend — a lot of signals don’t come into us as real signals… it might be going off that there is something to one side, but it might be a false signal because of the height of the vehicle or the length of the vehicle.
So the technology is there, but it’s not as reliable as it would be in a car.
Here’s what you should take away from Bob’s comments:
Don’t ride in the blindspot and rely on truck driver vigilance and technology to rescue you. Instead, ride where YOU are in control of your safety.
It took a lot of people to make this happen.
We have another post about how we made the video. It’s quite a story.
Outstanding!
Do you have a link that goes directly to just the video?
Serge, it’s coming soon.
We do want people to go to the Cycling Savvy web site. So give ’em the URL for this article with the embedded video. The direct link will come at some point.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/2020/10/view-from-cab-of-turning-truck/
Over the years, I’ve driven a few semis, some airport fuel trucks, and several “box vans” (think U-Haul trucks). People creeping into my blind spots always worried me, whether they were using vehicles (bicycles, cars, ramp tugs) or on foot.
I have long thought that people learning to drive need to spend some time in a big truck simulator to experience just how big the blind spots really are. This video is a great, and by comparison, very inexpensive, way for them to learn!
Thank you to all who contributed!
You are welcome. Help us distribute this far and wide!
I was privileged to be in the audience for the early edits of the video. After the preview, another member of the audience asked “why don’t motorists get hit when they’re in the so called bad spot?” Answer 1 was “they do”; answer 2 is “their vehicle is bigger and easier for the truck driver to detect”; answer 3 is the one that matters to Savvy Cyclists: the personal motor vehicle driver has put himself in a bad spot with respect to safety and perhaps with respect to the rules of the road, so he understandably might get hit.
Gary: Motorists who drive to the right of right-turning trucks do get hit, but not very often. Why not very often? Because people understand that the rules of movement (including: “don’t overtake a right-turning vehicle to its right”) apply to all motor vehicles all the time. For that reason, very few motorists drive in that dangerous spot at that moment. However, too many bicyclists think that the desire to hug the curb overrides the rules of movement.
The curb is not your friend!
Excellent video!
I agree that hug-the-curb syndrome is the main driver of cyclists riding too far to the right. I think that bad infrastructure also contributes. I live in a city with quite a few mostly-good bike lanes but intersections poorly designed for cyclists. In particular, far too many intersections have a go-straight bike lane to the right of a right-turn-allowed car lane.
Bicyclists’ overtaking on the right is also about entitlement: following from the observation that bicycling is desirable (true enough), bicyclists should have special, privileged treatment. That works in some situations but not in this one. In this situation, entitlement distorts the rule that turning traffic yields to through traffic, neglecting that the rules of movement also establish roadway position before turns to avoid conflicts. A related idea: bicycling should be accessible to people of all ages and abilities — including children who do not have the skills to negotiate with other road users. Everyone else should have to look out for bicyclists who don’t have the skills to look out for themselves. Entitlement doesn’t work so well when the bicyclist is in the motorist’s blindspot. It takes children into situations they can’t manage and invites adults to forego learning the skills which would keep them safe.
Nice and modern touch with Chief Jason Schiffer riding an eMTB!⚡
Jason is awesome. His ability to model safe behavior was a huge asset to this film. He is so busy as Lehigh University police chief that I hardly ever get to see him anymore. We are grateful that he took several hours to help this effort. Thank you for noticing!
And . . . I know ebikes are a huge blessing for people who are working on their bikes all day. That includes first responders (like you and Jason), delivery people, and others. If a police officer arrives at the scene of an emergency six hours into her shift, it’s great if the electric assist has helped her stay fresh, so she can do the do at the emergency.
Besides: Jason’s university campus is on a forbiddingly steep hillside. Students customarily DRIVE THEIR CARS a half mile to class because of the elevation change. Bike cops need a little help to do an entire shift on that terrain.
” . . . trucks are big and easy for cyclists to see and avoid. Cyclists just need to know what to do to stay safe.”
So add colliding with a turning truck to hitting an opening car door as another common cause of cyclist injuries and fatalities that can be completely prevented by a savvy cyclist.
This is an important and well produced video that I’m sure will save lives and improve cyclists’ confidence operating in traffic!