You can’t teach common sense

There will always be one driver who thinks nothing bad will happen to him

It never ceases to amaze and frustrate me when some joker slides his generic, computer-designed 4-wheeler in between my front bumper and the doors of the trailer/container immediately in front of me.

Said joker would be shocked at the adjectives I string together in direct reference to his current single digit IQ. Death wish? I’m going with his or her ignorance, and an over supply of stupidity bolstered by zero common sense.

One day, some years back, a guy driving a past-its-due-date four-wheeler cut in front of my loaded rig on Southwest Marine Drive during a rain storm. The traffic light turned red, and he slammed on the only thing that seemed to work — his brakes.

Funny thing about rigs, they don’t stop on a dime and give a nickel’s change. My rig sent that wreck through the intersection in no uncertain terms. I pulled over, ready to have a discussion with the other driver, but when I noticed his eyes looked like a road map, I suggested we call a cop. He quickly begged me not to make that call. Lucky thing I was no longer a smoker. We would have both gone up in flames just from the alcohol on his breath.

I smile now, but it was not funny back then. A drunk driver with no comprehension of the stopping abilities of cars vs. rigs, especially in the rain here on the Wet Coast.

That memory came flooding back recently when I was reading another report about driverless loaded rigs travelling in convoy down a busy highway. They aren’t in Metro Vancouver yet, but make no mistake they’re coming.

These remote rigs travel with no more than 14 metres of space between any two. That lack of separation is two-fold. To keep 4-wheelers from cutting in between the units, and second, to maintain computer control between the many driverless commercial rigs. It’s called “platooning.”

You can just bet there will be some joker in a micro car that will think nothing of slipping into that 14-metre space, and won’t he be surprised when he goes on a trip he hadn’t planned, or is turned into a metal and plastic sandwich.

The reason the rigs travel down the highway so closely together is to allow them to communicate using the combination of cameras, radar, and computers resulting in the constant vehicle to vehicle chit-chat. There are antennas on both mirrors of every rig, and the lead rig is always able to see the last one in the convoy.

Daimler Trucks North America seem to be the leader in the exploration of emerging commercial rig technologies, from electrification (rigs using battery-only power), to platooning, as I’ve described briefly above.

There are still a lot of questions to be asked and hopefully answered before this concept becomes a common occurrence on our nation’s highways. There will eventually be a special niche for driverless rigs in a platooning convoy, but according to Daimler, there is no real limit to the length of platooning.

Meanwhile, that company, and all the other commercial rig builders are still working on improvements for the old-fashioned units that are still on the road.

Working on less-to-no-soot from the exhaust, better brakes, and better fuel mileage.

Changes are also always coming in the design and running of rigs. But as these changes hit the road, there will always be the one driver who thinks nothing bad will ever happen to him, and he’ll try to slip in to where he is not welcome.

Wonder if the tech wizards will ever figure out how to stop stupidity or teach common sense?

I’m not holding my breath.