Hacker News Reader

Comment by JudasGoat | Hacker News Reader

" drivers prefer conventional trucks, the ride better, largely handle better, and are safer for the driver." I drove truck in the 90's and the joke back then was "cabover driver's were the first to arrive at the scene of an accident".

View on HN

Are they better for pedestrians, cyclists, bikers and other drivers, though? I imagine it's much easier to see things in front of you with the cabover design.

Personally I'd optimize a bit more for everyone else's safety, since you know, there's more of them. Plus a semi is a multi-ton missile going 90kmph.

Can you share evidence they aren’t better?

School buses typically have a large nose in front of the driver. Are they unsafe?

Those hunking blocks of sheet-metal in the US that you call school buses (alternatively, prisoner transport)? Well, yeah. European buses share much with their truck counterparts, except the massively better visibility all around:

https://www.mercedes-benz-bus.com/content/dam/mbo/markets/co...

I can't really share any studies, but some people seem to have more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30195371

Intuitively it would make sense that being able to see in front of you with no obstruction would have an impact on safety. How much, I can't say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> School buses typically have a large nose in front of the driver. Are they unsafe?

Guess what, European buses don't have a nose, either :-)))

School busses have a regulatory carve out for pollution controls and seat belts. School busses are most dangerous new built passenger vehicles allowed on the road in the US with more than three wheels.

Yet fatal accidents involving school buses are vanishingly rare.

School busses only rarely get on the highway, most collisions happen on low speed secondary roads, which are rarely fatal. Plus the sheer mass of the bus means it doesn't get thrown around as much as a car would in an accident.

They do have higher standards for the drivers

The standards are basically the same as for a commercial truck driver. The edge cases of what they're willing to accept are slightly different.

How dangerous?

Some school buses have a large nose, but many school buses are rear-engined and have flat fronts.

Truck accidents where the truck plows into another vehicle are relatively rare. We know because they're recorded by the DOT, and kept as statistics. You're more likely to take them our with the trailer than driving over the front of them.

I have seen four wheelers do all sorts of stupid shit around trucks, stuff that endangers everyones lives, I want that extra little bit of hood in front of me.

I agree that going to a hybrid model is good, where its a short nose conventional cab, like the Cascadia - rather than a long hood-high hood model.

> Truck accidents where the truck plows into another vehicle are relatively rare.

Interesting, in Germany there happen 4 truck accidents on highways every day, every third one of those is a truck driving into the end of a traffic jam [0], in total they apparently cause more deaths than speeding [1].

[0] https://www.autofahrerseite.eu/sicherheit/524-lkw-unfall-sta...

[1] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/lkw-unfaelle-fordern-...

Driving a cabover would seem to not help in those situations, somewhat obviously.

A cabover has better close up visibility, not distance.

These day even very cheap car (Nissan micra say) has auto brake and track alignment. Not e-car just normal one. If the stat is so bad in German can this help? Seems inexpensive technology now like abs etc.

It's there, but there are issues:

https://trid.trb.org/view/1756275

Reply on news.ycombinator.com