'Share The Road' Teaches Drivers To Avoid Becoming Statistics
Stay out of trucks' blind spots, pass on the left, professional driver says
Last updated Thursday, October 6, 2005 9:35 PM CDT in Business
By Lana F. Flowers
The Morning News
The silver minivan was right beside the 18-wheeled tractor-trailer rig. Truck driver Danny Ewell could not see the vehicle.
"Watch. See, he's there, coming up in my mirror. Now, I know he's there, but I can't see him," Ewell said, as the minivan disappeared from both the mirror and the cab's view.
The motorist in the minivan was doing something a driver usually should not do -- lingering in a big truck's blind spot.
"The longer and wider a vehicle is, the bigger the blind spot," Ewell said.
He advised passenger-vehicle drivers to pass quickly and get by big trucks.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported that 35 percent of all fatality accidents involving tractor-trailer rigs occurred in a truck's blind spot.
The minivan driver who lingered in Ewell's blind spot was not an ordinary, unsuspecting driver. He was Mike Russell, the American Trucking Associations' vice president for public affairs.
Russell, Ewell, driver Dan Hiser of ABF Freight System Inc. in Fort Smith and the "Share the Road" semi truck made stops Thursday at the Wal-Mart Supercenter off Pleasant Grove Road in Rogers as part of a safety initiative. The "Share the Road" program teaches passenger vehicle drivers how to safely navigate the nation's highways and byways alongside large trucks.
"We try to go to 25 different cities in the U.S. every year, focusing if we can on areas with a large amount of truck traffic," Russell said.
The American Trucking Associations "Share the Road" team chose to stop in Northwest Arkansas, Russell said, because of local truck traffic generated by the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. truck fleet; J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., based in Lowell; P.A.M. Transportation Services Inc., based in Tontitown; Willis Shaw Express, based in Elm Springs; and other carriers.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration reported that about 75 percent of all fatality accidents involving large trucks were initiated by passenger vehicle drivers. The Department of Transportation reported there were 43,000 highway fatalities in 2004.
Ewell, of Greeneville, Tenn., is the right truck driver to tell passenger vehicle motorists how not to become another accident statistic. Ewell has been a Wal-Mart driver for 15 years and a professional truck driver for a total of 25 years. He has driven 2.7 million miles without a preventable accident.
He said passenger vehicles always should pass on a big rig's left side -- the driver's side -- so the truck driver can more easily see the passenger vehicle. A truck driver would have difficulty leaning over eight feet of cab space between him and his passenger side mirror to keep an eye on motorists passing on the right, Ewell said.
About that time, Russell and his silver minivan cut directly in front of Ewell's 18-wheeler. The minivan cleared the truck, but barely.
"That's the most common thing I see, is a car cutting over in front of my truck too quickly," Ewell said. "They haven't hit us, but they have not left me enough room to stop if something happens."
Ewell said it takes the length of a football field -- 100 yards -- to stop a 80,000-pound tractor trailer rig going 60 miles per hour. The average passenger vehicle weighing 3,000 pounds needs only one-fifth that distance to stop.
Ewell did not discuss how long it takes to stop big rigs going more than 60-65 miles per hour. He said most tractor-trailer rigs are equipped with speed governors, which will not allow the trucks to go faster than that.
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