WAIT A SECOND!
Let’s kick off with a fact – heavily laden articulated trucks are generally unable to come to a complete halt in the time it takes a yellow traffic light to turn red.
Now, ever heard of the ‘dilemma zone’? You will know it, even if you don’t know its name.
Imagine you drive a heavy-duty truck, or you employ one who does. Imagine an experienced driver operating a fully-loaded semi is approaching traffic lights, in this case in a 60km/h speed limit zone.
The driver understands the dynamics of the vehicle very well indeed. And when the traffic light begins to turn yellow, or amber if you prefer, the idea of an emergency stop, with the load of steel being hauled, is judged to be just too dangerous.
It all happens in a sliver of a split second as the driver makes the decision in that dilemma zone mentioned above. Brake very hard and risk jack-knifing in the traffic, or continue through and risk a hefty fine.
Professional driver Don Smith from New South Wales got that hefty fine, along with the red-light camera image of the infraction, but felt aggrieved.
“But what could I do?” he said to his father, Brian Smith, a western NSW farmer. “There just wasn’t time to stop safely.”
And so began a quest to finds out
