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The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

mikeayles.com

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Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#111

Post by cucumber3732842 »

matsemann wrote: post #46
dmurray wrote: post #8

> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day. The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h…

> Most assume the truck driver is being inconsiderate. From the article. Then goes on to show exactly how they're inconsiderate with maths. How they're not seeing it is baffling.

> How they're not seeing it is baffling.

It's like when a big co says "now we care greatly about the environment" before going on to detail their plan for something that's laughably bad for it.

They see it. They just phrased the article that way because they don't want to catch hand wringing and hate comments from every idiot who does the exact same thing in their car with slightly different values for the variables outlined and without any of the physics/economics excuses to justify it.

Edit: I hope. I can't read minds, you may very well be right and they don't see it.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#112

Post by cucumber3732842 »

542354234235 wrote: post #81
dmurray wrote: post #8

> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day. The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h…

It kind of annoys me that the article says the people trapped behind the trucks are just inconvenienced, but the truck driver gains time and money. Considering commuting to and from work is what most people are doing on the road, that is exactly time and money. It really could be seen as truck drivers stealing dozens, if not hundreds, of minutes from other drivers to give themselves 5 minutes.

>It really could be seen as truck drivers stealing dozens, if not hundreds, of minutes from other drivers to give themselves 5 minutes.

People cut truckers a brake because due to the physics and rules they can only go so fast and only change speed so quickly.

The same cannot be said for the person camping the fast/passing lane because all the entering and exiting of the slow lane "is scary" or whatever. Their normal car can most definitely meet (and exceed) the expected norm for the lane they're traveling in.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#113

Post by Tade0 »

close04 wrote: post #29
dmurray wrote: post #8

> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day. The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h…

> That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away This is regulated via "no overtaking by trucks" [1] signs on portions of road that are susceptible to formation of queues, or more dangerous road conditions. P.S. To bundle some replies: > but they only apply during busy hours Don't remember ever seeing the time interval next to these signs. They are tied more to the location than the time. But…

In Poland this default was changed some time ago. Specifically trucks are not allowed to overtake on two-lane highways and express roads:

https://trafficban.com/news.1590.html

There's an exception made for cases where there's a vehicle on the right lane going much slower than the speed limit for trucks.

The public broadly agrees that this move was beneficial, as the miniscule benefit of some trucks arriving 15min earlier overall was not worth slowing down everyone else, particularly light commercial vehicles.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#114

Post by Tade0 »

entuno wrote: post #43
close04 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away This is regulated via "no overtaking by trucks" [1] signs on portions of road that are susceptible to formation of queues, or more dangerous road conditions. P.S. To bundle some replies: > but they only apply during busy hours Don't remember ever seeing the time interval next to these signs. They are tied more to the location than the time. But…

I've also seen roads that have these kind of signs, but they only apply during busy hours. However, as with any traffic controls they're useless if they're not actually enforced. Which is a shame, because it'd be absolutely trivial to automate that detection with cameras.

Let dashcam footage be used as evidence of traffic violations and behold how quick will drivers themselves be to send every such piece of footage to the police.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#115

Post by ErroneousBosh »

mschuster91 wrote: post #74
izacus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tachographs are mandatory and monitored across the EU so I very much doubt that's really happening.

Just because something is mandatory, doesn't mean it's enforced. You got 6 million trucks registered in the EU alone [1], plus fleets of trucks registered in adjacent states such as Turkey or Serbia, or old trucks out of the new Eastern European states that predate their EU membership and, with it, mandatory governors. And loggers can be manipulated as well, if you do it right there is no chance of finding that out w…

> Or you simply have two datalogger cards, that you swap out when going into one of these countries.

Which logs that the card has been swapped.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#116

Post by HPsquared »

throwaway198846 wrote: post #93
HPsquared wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a diffuse, but I suspect large, economic cost to delaying other vehicles.

You just made me imagine switching lanes microtransactions as a solution which made my soul shudder in a deep seated disgust, so I had to share it.

Enforced by cameras, of course.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#117

Post by benj111 »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #90

> The truck cannot go faster. Floor the throttle at 56mph and nothing happens. The fuel injection is electronically capped. Man, that's kindof scary -- if for some reason the truck legitimately needs to go faster (eg, escape a warzone, a flood, a wildfire), it cannot do so. I'm sure this was a calculated design decision, but on the surface I'd prefer if the speed was logged and then checked at regular intervals (perh…

I hope you can accept that all of those things are incredibly rare, and that it's not clear that a higher speed would be a net benefit to the driver, much less all the other road users. Then consider what removing the hard limit does for the other 99.99999999% of the time.

This is a tech site, just imagine what absolutely terrible things could be justified, 'just in case'

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#118

Post by benj111 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #23
dmurray wrote: post #8

> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day. The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h…

From a commercial perspective, you would think the fuel savings from slipstreaming would more than make up for those five minutes.

They would but the driver isn't paid for the fuel saving so he spends 5 extra minutes to save the company money.

Re: The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph

#120

Post by testing22321 »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #102
testing22321 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the mpg figures are almost certainly “metric gallons”, 4.5l. US gallons are 3.8l

UK uses "imperial gallons", which are no more metric than US customary gallons. Expanded to 3 decimals, a UK/imperial gallon is 4.546L, and a US customary gallon is 3.786, and a US gallon is close to 3.8L, than a imperial gallon is to 4.5L.

I’m Australia we always call the 4.5 one a “metric gallon”
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