What exactly happened there?
It's tough to see the heave but at 22 seconds, if you hit pause, you start to see skid marks in the lane to the right of the semi. Both lanes on either side of the semi appear to be patched. At 24 seconds you can see how the skid marks in the right lane skip a few times. Looks like a bump to me.
I'm making some assumptions of course. Something could have broke on the truck but the stats say if you're driving in North America, mechanical failures are rare.
Each time the truck hit a bump in the first 22 seconds it sounded like an overloaded end dump, bottoming out. Add the corner to a bump and a loose grip on the wheel........it happens.
The hope is, anyone driving a car will recognize that bad things can happen when driving near big trucks. The trucking industry is still full of the some of the best drivers on the planet so giving them room to work just makes it easier for everyone. Truckers save countless numbers of oblivious drivers daily.
This also applies to any Civilian drivers passing our MV's. I've had folks pull along side the M135 on the highway and slow traffic down behind them so they could take pictures. We should always encourage folks to watch their mirrors, drive while they're driving, move right when someone's behind them and take pictures when the trucks are parked. They just need to check the local Steel Soldiers events calendar, the MVPA or visit a museum.
I'm always happiest when someone passes quick then leaves a football field in front of me before they pull back in. Those drivers are usually focused and aware of their situation so we need to make more of them.
Staying within 10% of the maximum speed limit, for short bursts, keeps me out of tickets. It's unlikely you'd ever get a prosecutor or LEO on here saying it's ok to speed to maximize spatial separation but I'd like to hear some other views. My view is completely skewed by survival and thinking any reasonable person can see that safety is much more important than a slight variation in a suggested maximum speed.
In the fine technique of merging, when the big rigs aren't "letting us in", and our choices are to speed up or stop on a highway merging ramp.....we should speed up.
If I'm merging, or being merged on I'm in planning mode long before I get there. If we were all on the same page we'd be moving over to let folks merge. If that can't be done then we'd slow down a little before the merge and let folks in. We all need to be on the same page though and if the merging drivers are slowing down to get 'behind' highway traffic and highway traffic is slowing down to allow merging drivers in...well, there's the problem.
Ideally, if drivers merge with the gas pedal, start looking for that open merge spot early and know that the MV or transport is slowing a little to let them in, it'd make it easier on all of us. Get on the gas, get on the highway and get out of the way.
I now think I got out of that last ticket because I went on and on and on and on