Even an unloaded truck or bobtail (no trailer) can be unable to slow down in time to not run over a car in front. In fact, it takes longer (and farther) to stop an empty trailer or bobtail than a loaded one. It's in the CDL handbook. It's in section 6.1.2, as well as the end of 2.6.1. You can find copies of it all over the internet. Trucks alone typically weigh between 5 and 10 tons, with another 10 tons of trailer. No matter how you put it, you've got a massive hunk of steel going down the road, easily able to kill (unintentionally) people that are going slower than they should. Best way to stay safe: Do the speed limit, no more, and especially no less, unless necessary by traffic or road conditions. There are a few exceptions to the rule that unloaded trucks take longer to stop, such as hauling liquids (water, petroleum products, etc.), which will slosh around inside the tank, often furthering the stopping distance.
Simular accident happend to my dad once. Truck driver fell asleep while driving, then hit another truck, which rammed into the rear of my dad's '95 Civic sedan, then his car hit someone getting over into his lane, before his car came to a halt after it spun into a ditch. My dad's car got hit at interstate speed, ( 75 MPH, 120 KPH ) but it would have been much worse it the second truck wasn't there. The second truck absorbed most of the impact that the first truck put out, but it was still a hard hit. The driver of the first truck died, while the driver of the second truck was injured badly, while my dad only needed a few stitches on his forehead from the shattered glass flying at him.
Just wondering, what IS a PVT automatic transmission? Is that just what they call normal automatics these days after CVTs came out or are they something else entirely?
This, so much this. There's actually a corner on my commute that I call the "Hill of Ninnies" because it serves pretty effectively to weed out the people who are just unaware from the people who are afraid of driving. It's a downhill left sweeper, fairly wide open. Speed limit is 55, most passenger cars and light trucks can probably take it at 70+ safely as long as there's no cops around, and if you're not paying attention you will probably speed up on that hill. So if someone's slowing down to below the limit on that hill, or if they were already under the limit and still slow down for it, chances are good that they're going slow on purpose. Don't do this. It makes me violently angry when people do this, because, in the words of Car Throttle, "chances are the reason I'm driving is to get somewhere." And if I'm not, then I'm probably out for a rip, in which case it's still annoying.
Absolutely right. Stripped Golf R32 = faster than an Aston Rapide. --- Post updated --- Gees, that's bad. Worst accident I've ever had is rear-ending a Punto at 10mph in my batterd old 106.
The farm I live on used to have a ford transit with a 5th wheel for moving trailers around the yard. You dont really have the torque for hauling proper loads long distance like a semi though.
There are people who run commercially with one ton pickup trucks, they are referred to as "Hot Shot's" But as far as actually moving a real semi trailer, the trucks would have the power to move them, however there is no way to hook the pickup to the trailer, or any way to slow the trailer down, as the trailer would have air brakes, that would have to caged open, and the pickup truck would not have the braking ability to slow that much weight down. However, if you can get ahold of a proper trailer, you could get quite close.
Thanks for the replies so practically yes now the only thing is what the german tüv and police is going to say if i get a hold of a truck like that. Whats also cool is that a friend of mine used a pickup as a tractor because his tractor wouldnt work and that worked fine as well
One other thing I should mention, no pickup truck is going to have a GCVW of 80,000 lbs, so there is that one fairly major difference. I think highest hot shot pickup I'd seen was in the 45K-50K lb range. By the way, what truck do you have in mind?
If i would do this i would have a dodge truck in mind in general im thinking of buying the ram rebel in maybe 2 years because i just bought a new car
The Rebel is a half ton, you're not moving going to be able move much more than a big boat or another car or truck on a trailer.
This is very much in the tuner spirit of "can't afford it? Build something better" mentality that I couldn't fuck with more. In my limited technical knowledge on trucks, I'd imagine the transmission would be the weak point in the drive train no? If you have a 6 or 700 hp diesel truck, I'd imagine like the rest of you guys said, the real fun in hauling a semi worthy load would be getting it stopped before the new year. Maybe oversized brakes with a home made water cooling setup? Granted it wouldn't be OK for road use, and you'd Crack rotors left and right, but I do have an academic curiosity as to how that all would play out.
The majority of hot shots are running mostly stock, warrantied, trucks, so think 350-450 HP with 500-650 ft lbs. Although, the two guys that I personally know who run commercially with a pickup truck, are both running 98-02 24 Valve Cummins Dodges. I know one more than the other, so he'll be the example. He's got a 2001 ext. cab Ram 3500 2wd with a 24 valve and an NV5600 6 speed manual. He has a programmer on it that he basically uses just to get better fuel mileage. He bought this truck with 170,000 miles on it, and now it has nearly 600,000 on it, and in that time he's replaced the clutch twice, all six injectors once, and the carrier bearing on the driveshaft twice. By the way, this truck is almost always at his gross of 35K.
Another big difference between a pickup truck and a semi truck is the overall weight. If you were to pull a 10,000 lb RV behind a pickup you would definitely know it was there, especially if there are crosswinds. That same trailer behind a fullsize truck would hardly be noticeable due to how much more the truck ways relative to the trailer.
Haven spoken to some BMW employee's last year (who were on the software side of things) they said essentially the same thing as in this video. BMW is aiming to make cars that are great to drive when you want to drive them as well as allowing you to sit back and relax when you want to. While I didn't ask them about this I would heavily expect many of the self driving systems such as collision avoidance to be in full swing though when being manually driven. Although I can only presume that they would put in a way to turn off the ones that would make track use impossible/dangerous. On the topic of ABS and ESC. I would hypothesise that in a well made system no human driver could compare. The main reason is this: The driver only has 1 brake pedal for all brakes, computers are fully capable of adjusting brake bias on the fly in order to achieve the greatest level of grip on each individual tyre. Equally the driver cannot be expected to control torque vectoring which can be used to go faster or make the car more controllable on the limit via ESC. The reason being is that it would be too much data for someone to process and act upon (even if you had the mental capacity coordinating 4 brake pedals would not be trivial). Whereas a computer can do billions of operations per second to keep track of everything and do a very good and predictable job of it. Therefore imo ABS and ESC should be fitted to all cars, however all ABS and ESC systems should meet certain competency standards. The only good reason to disable a good implementation of the computer assists that I can think of is for fun, which is a great reason to do so. In many modern cars its basically impossible to turn them off anyway. Since the car wouldn't run well without them operating to some extent. Equally where do you draw the line, handling assists? engine management? Its all computers optimising the way a car drives in order to please the "target audience" regardless of whether its been done to make the specs look better or to provide tangible benefit.
You draw the line at the point where it becomes a crutch for weak drivers. ABS already has shades of this (and early systems often were inferior to a skilled driver), while ESC and TCS serve mainly to reduce the level of throttle and steering skill you need to drive a car quickly and should thus be fully defeatable.
