this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Can you elaborate? I don't quite follow.
4-8x longer to stop because of cold snowy or icy weather? Or because of increased weight of such large vehicles?
And why does seeing farther matter for stopping distance, when the rule of thumb is to maintain X car lengths or Y seconds between your car and the car in front of you? Not even a fully loaded semi needs the entire length of what their higher viewing angle grants them
4 if it's good weather. 8 times in bad. Your reaction time in a bigger vehicle is different because of the weight. So both your guesses apply.
Maintaining distance does help, however it's not a perfect matrix. People cut in front of big vehicles constantly expecting the same distance and it just doesn't help. The added view helps. An entire industry is based on it and backed by all sorts of reasons.
What they haul plays a role as well. Liquids and gases slosh funny and higher speeds.
I'd be interested to see some studies that support the idea that increased ride height in a vehicle results in fewer accidents (or fatalities or injuries, however you'd measure it) specifically because of the change in viewing angle
I'm extremely skeptical, especially since taller vehicles are becoming more common, wouldn't that alone diminish this effect?
The Smith System. Look into it. Science backed results.
I don't see "sit really high" in these five driving habits
Then you need to dive deeper into the history of how it was developed and why it was. Reduction into just 5 steps isn't looking into why it's backed by an entire industry.