Mr Purple wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 10:28 am
elantra wrote: ↑Mon Oct 16, 2023 7:57 am
It’s like deja vu.
Just goes to show that peoples are good at making the same errors from the past and we are no more enlightened than our predecessors.
I own a 1979 Valiant. It basically killed Chrysler Australia because it was too big (5m), too thirsty (15l/100km), and too slow (0-100 in 11.7 seconds).
Compare these figures to the top selling dual cabs today. They're extremely similar.
Also I'll just leave this here.
This morning I saw a recent model B-double truck/trailer combination vehicle.
Cruising at a speed appropriate to the conditions.
No surprises, these vehicles are the bread and butter of the interstate transport industry these days in Australia
It belonged to one of the large transport companies, although I’m not sure if the truck itself would be company-owned or owner-operator contracted.
A bit noteworthy was the graphics on the Curtainsider trailer - in huge letters it stated “be aware of truck blindspots” or almost that.
You get the message.
Now I’m not suggesting that anyone should “ignore” the possibility of a truck blindspot, but it should not be such an open and closed fact of life anymore.
My 8 years old Holden came standard with a reversing camera. Works well.
And you see plenty of cars these days with interesting little lights on their side mirror housings which I presume are sensors that alert the operator to vehicles alongside.
So why don’t heavy vehicles routinely have technologies like this ???
I spose some do - but perhaps not enough of them.
These technologies presumably these days are not that expensive if just about every new car has them.
Yes it would cost a few $$$ to put them on trucks but, as a proportion of the cost of a B double truck it would probably be very little.
The Vehicle that I saw this morning was a Volvo FH13 with 2 Curtainsider type trailers.
Approx cost of the Volvo (new) is about 300 thousand dollars, and approx cost of the Trailer (combo) is a bit over 200 thousand dollars.
In other words the vehicle combination is worth more than half a million dollars.
So why don’t vehicles such as this have a few of these cameras ?
I’m not sure the full answer but I suspect that part of the answer is that it would be a bit much to expect one driver to process so much information.
If that is the case then it’s a good case for rebuffing the current industry trend which is to allow the use even longer vehicles on many roads which once upon a time were restricted to one trailer only.