Car attempts to squeeze past an oversize truck and pays the price.

phew. well glad he didn't include any other car. Hope nobody got hurt though
 
Nice of the cam car to close up the gap between him/her and truck also moving over to make things even more hairy for the overtaking car. Agree the red car should never have attempted to pass but I can't help thinking the camcar contributed to sending the red car into the bushes.
 
What absolute lunacy. I wish I could say "only in America" but unfortunately that's not true is it?
 
The cam car was most likely an escort vehicle. In the states extra-wide loads usually are required to have at least 2, one leading and one following - both with flashing yellow caution lights. By law no other vehicles are allowed between the escorts and the extra-wide so he may have been closing the gap to prevent that from happening. As to the truck itself moving to the right he had no choice in the matter as the road narrowed at the point where he moved over.
 
DT MI said:
The cam car was most likely an escort vehicle. In the states extra-wide loads usually are required to have at least 2, one leading and one following - both with flashing yellow caution lights. By law no other vehicles are allowed between the escorts and the extra-wide so he may have been closing the gap to prevent that from happening. As to the truck itself moving to the right he had no choice in the matter as the road narrowed at the point where he moved over.
Click to expand...

I don't know how you'd enforce such a law and who gets the ticket? The car who managed or just happened to get in between or the follow car for not breaking the law by following too closely to prevent it? Here the lead car is rarely directly in front or behind, more often than not the lead car is 600+ feet ahead and the tail car the same. I've really never seen them tail gate each other like in the video. It makes more sense for one to be further ahead and one to be further behind in order to alert drivers what's coming. Driving all in one line with barely a gap doesn't provide any alert system or safety.
 
MiiHere said:
I don't know how you'd enforce such a law and who gets the ticket?...
Click to expand...
OK, I might be wrong on that. I did a quick 'Google' and couldn't find anything. It may have been something I read regarding safe driving that advised not getting between the escort and wide load.

From this site: http://oversizeloadescorts.com/regs/regs.php?s=mi (This is for Michigan. Change the state code for other states. I've noticed it sometimes varies quite a bit from state to state.)

ESCORT REQUIREMENTS


A Rear Escort is required for loads over 12' wide on 4-lane highway. A Front Escort is required for loads over 12' wide on 2-lane highway. A Front and rear Escort are required for loads over 14' wide. A Front Escort with height pole required when load exceeds 14' 6" high and over.


Length 90' to 100', One (1) Rear; Length over 100', Two (2) (Front & Rear); Height over 14'5" with height pole, One (1) front; Height over 15' with height, Two (2) (Front & Rear); Overhang over 15', One (1) Rear; Permit depends upon state routing. One (1) Escort with rear overhangs over 15' or over 90' long. Two (2) Escorts required over 100' long.

ESCORT VEHICLE REQUIREMENTS


A Passenger car or pickup truck with at least one flashing/rotating amber light on top of the vehicle. In addition, there will be displayed on the roof of the Escort vehicle one "Oversize Load" sign 5' x 12" with 8" high black letters on yellow background. If the height of the vehicle exceeds 14'6", the Escort vehicle will be required to have a fixed measuring device set at a height to assure clearance of the load. At least two (2) flashing or rotating amber Lights to be placed on the extreme rear of the load. (Permittee responsibility) All flashing or rotating amber Lights to be visible for a distance of 500'. Special provisions and requirements are listed on the permit.
 
I didn't see anything about distance in that, but the fact that they have standards for how many cars and their lights etc etc. makes total sense. I don't see the concern if a car is between the lead/follow cars and it's load, unless they are making some crazy wild maneuver and they need to block the flow of traffic, but if that's going to happen there are police cars involved, to me yellow lights don't give you permission to do much. On a main stretch of highway/freeway to me it's just more traffic, but it's nice to know I'm coming up on traffic overhanging into my lane, probably more helpful for larger vehicles.
 
Nobody else notice the lanes were merging? I hate people who overtake aggressively when lanes merge, so I enjoyed watching that idiot crash very much.
 
Auld Reekie said:
Nice of the cam car to close up the gap between him/her and truck also moving over to make things even more hairy for the overtaking car. Agree the red car should never have attempted to pass but I can't help thinking the camcar contributed to sending the red car into the bushes.
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Watching the video again it looks to me that if the red car had pulled over in front of the cam car it would have been much worse.

Given the speed it was traveling there appears to be no way it would have been able to avoid rear-ending the truck and also involving the cam car. IMO it looks like what actually happened resulted in the least amount of damage compared to other potential endings.
 
The vehicle filming seems very, very close, and you can hear radio chatter (can't quite make out what is being said.) I reckon it is an escort vehicle, and it was deliberately moving right to prevent any reckless attempt to overtake. Clearly didn't work though.
 
Based on the road markings, the cam car had to merge with the right lane at the lane merge so the cam car should not have changed lane with the red car 1 second from passing, it should have either pulled out a lot sooner or given way. Assuming that the cam car was an escort vehicle then its job is to prevent things like this happening by giving other road users plenty of warning of the unexpected danger, it appears to have failed by being far too close to the vehicle it is escorting, it is pointless being that close since by the time the other road users have seen the escort they can also see the danger.

OK, the red car driver either made a stupid mistake or was not paying sufficient attention, but it looks like a big failure of the escort driver not doing his job to me.
 
That doesn't look like the US. Can't make out the tag on the VW.
In the US, too many of the oversized load drivers and escorts are a bit too aggressive, and sloppy.
Often they're also frequently in violation of the trip permit conditions, which usually specifies a speed below the posted speed limit, and other restrictions.
This truck should have been centered as much as possible on the right edge of the lane that was still open, but we can't tell if he is setting himself up to be centered on whatever the lane is ahead? (Obstructions, etc)
Often the escort cars will attempt to block aggressive drivers in these situations, at which time the aggressive car usually tries to go around the other way.
(Maybe happened here)

It's a pain in the XXX to do these loads, one of the reasons I don't do them any more.
You also have some serious time constraints, worse in winter, related to daylight.
 
In watching the video once again it almost looks like the red car was attempting to pass the cam car on the right, started to move back to the left, then saw the truck and swerved back to the right again and off the road.

Can't imagine the driver of the red car not seeing something as big as the over sized truck in front of the cam car but I've seen crazier stuff than than in a lot of videos.
 
DT MI said:
Can't imagine the driver of the red car not seeing something as big as the over sized truck.
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The cam car was blocking the flashing amber light on the truck, rendering it invisible. Yeah, that must have been it. :D

The cam car starts moving right at least five seconds before the red car passes. Either the red car driver wasn't watching the road, or was going so fast that it couldn't avoid overtaking in those 5 seconds. The more I watch it the harder it is to believe it was a planned overtake.
 
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Rajagra said:
The cam car was blocking the flashing amber light on the truck, rendering it invisible. Yeah, that must have been it. :D
Click to expand...
More likely it was the "You have a new text" notification from his/her phone. :(
 
DT MI said:
More likely it was the "You have a new text" notification from his/her phone. :(
Click to expand...
Yes, you got in before my edit. One way or another he was not paying proper attention.
 
Haha when we have huge wind turbine parts beeing transported on the motorways in daytime, the pussi Danes dont dare to overtake them.
Even if there is plenty room and they could legally blast past dooing 130 km/h, i assume its the flashing yellow lights and a large thing ( larger then the trucks ppl are used to )
So ppl freak out where there is no need at all to freak out, had it been a terror related matter billions would have been spent making special roads just for trucks transporting wind turbine parts.

As our American frinds say "go big or go home"
27-2013.jpg
 
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