Years ago, I was driving an 18-wheeled milk tanker. 5000 gallons of raw milk sloshing around inside an un-baffled tank on it's way to the dairy. I'm on a 4-lane at 55 MPH when a guy 4th in line at an on-ramp decides he's in too much of a hurry to wait and pulls out in front of me and STOPS and then starts waving the people that were in front of him on the on-ramp to go. I had cars in the lane next to me and couldn't move over so I hit the brakes and the horns (luckily no one else on the ramp decided to go for it!). Needless to say, I nailed the guy. I can say from experience that when 80,000 pounds of truck hits a 3000 pound car, you feel nothing. That truck didn't shake, shimmy or vibrate in the slightest, it just shot that car away like a cannonball! The car was an '79 Olds Cutlass Supreme, a fairly large car, and it was scrap after that. I'll bet that car was shortened by three feet after I hit him, and with his girlfriend and daughter in the rear seat! He gets out and starts screaming at me that I should have stopped. I'm thinking "Yeah, no kidding. That's easy to say, it's convincing the truck that's the problem." Big trucks don't "stop," they just keep slowing down until they're not moving.
I started screaming back at him that I was already on the road at the legal speed limit. You're supposed to yield to oncoming traffic, hence the big YIELD sign! Luckily, no one was hurt, but he ended up suing my company anyway. He lost, but I was still angry about it. I was doing everything by the book, he drove stupidly and yet still blames everyone but himself for what happened. Driving heavy trucks is a very frustrating way to make a living.
Anyway, one of the kids, who's good at math, figures this out and gives it to me...
- 80,000 pounds of truck, moving at 55 MPH, has exactly the same momentum (Momentum is mass x velocity) as a 2200 pound car moving at four times the speed of sound.
Every time I heard someone complain about stupid drivers, I yell "Try it in a heavy truck!"