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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

>An investigator with the local police department blamed the collision on the truck driver, who was initially charged with negligent homicide, though charges were eventually dropped

I wonder why.

Another issue is the size of trucks. The state where I lived:

* Truck size was limited, large trucks were only allowed on one Highway. Goods were transferred to smaller Trucks for transport to factories.

* Driving trucks on Sundays was not allowed.

* Large Trucks were not allowed on City Streets. Since this happened it is open season on bicycle riders.

Reagan de-regulated and Trucks can be any size, plus they can clog the roads on Sunday. The last item I do not know when it was enabled, but it happened after Reagan.

I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one. I think it is about time we limit sizes to what existed on the 60s. If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains.

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> Reagan de-regulated and Trucks can be any size, plus they can clog the roads on Sunday. The last item I do not know when it was enabled, but it happened after Reagan.

If you want federal highway money, then your highways need to conform to federal standards. These standards allow for trailers up to 53' in length and up to 80,000lbs to operate without any prior authorization as long as they otherwise conform to vehicle standards.

States are always free to turn down the money and enact whatever standards they like; however, the standards seem incredibly reasonable to me and not at all something you can simply blame on a single President passing laws sent to him by Congress. States also have the task of enforcing laws on the highway and can operate commercial vehicle checkpoints.

> I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one. [...] time to go back to freight trains.

You're still limited by overall length. FedEx will often operate two short trailers in an articulated tandem. They do this for what I hope are obvious reasons that cannot be fulfilled by rail transport.

How is prohibiting truck transport on Sunday good for other road users? You'd be eliminating 14% of hours in the week, which means a corresponding higher density of trucks on non-Sunday days

Plus, if you don't like truck drivers, why would you want more of them in heaven with you?

Coming from countries where truck transport is not allowed on Sundays - it's great. Means that if you're going with your family somewhere on Sunday it's very quiet on the roads. Also awesome for long distance driving, always plan those for a Sunday and the traffic flows much smoother. As for the idea that it moves the traffic to other days - no it doesn't, because a lot of that traffic wouldn't be driving on Sunday anyway - most businesses are closed on Sundays anyway.

Perhaps traffic flows smoother because there is just less traffic altogether on Sunday. And anyway, who is operating these trucks that would be driving on Sunday if it was legal, but instead don't drive at all? If trucks aren't driving on Sunday anyway then there is little need to ban them.

I believe there is less truck driving here on Sundays even though it is legal because truckers try to take days off and see family too.

Isn't this just a somewhat arbitrary benefit for people who have Sundays free? Lots of people have to work Sundays. It seems like a lottery that some people will benefit from and some will suffer from, for no good reason.

Some EU countries or regions thereof ban both truck traffic and retail trade on Sundays – and there aren’t many people that would be working on a Sunday outside of retail trade. The vast, vast majority of the population there has Sunday free.

Here in Berlin plenty of people work on Sunday (service industry, gas stations) but all grocery stores are closed and the number of people working is significantly less than in NYC for instance. I like it this way ... but do kind of miss NY too :-)

Please no. Sundays in Belgium were awful. Nothing to do.

At least now in the USA I can go do what I want. It's like any other day. I don't need to stuff everything in my Saturday.

And if that means that I'll pass a couple of Semi trucks? No problem. Hell, I'll move out of the way for them. After all, there isn't a single thing in my hands that hasn't been delivered by a truck.

I don't get your point. How would a lack of trucks in the weekend negatively affect your Sundays in Belgium exactly?

He's implying the same laws that say you can't drive trucks on a Sunday, also restrict other labor, or make it uneconomical (e.g. having to pay mandatory overtime for weekend hours performed).

He's wrong anyway, there's no ban on general trucking on the weekends in Belgium, only oversized loads. He is right about strict labor laws, you'll barely find any open stores on a Sunday, besides restaurants, bars and some other forms of entertainment.

But yeah, God forbid you can't go to the European equivalent of a Best Buy on a Sunday, so some retail worker can enjoy their weekend.

> Sundays in Belgium were awful. Nothing to do.

I never got this? The only thing to do in your mind is shopping?

Restaurants, cinemas, other leisure activities are all available right?

You'd be surprised. I'm literally looking at a mall right now that is open Mon-Sat each week + 1 Sunday / week.

If I have 8 days off per month that literally removes 3/8, or 37.5%.

Also larger grocery stores aren't open unless they get an exception.

Truck traffic is banned in several EU countries on Sundays and rural communities love it. Families in villages where the sole street is the tertiary road running through, don’t have to worry on Sundays about their children playing outside along that road.

Because their child will survive a collision with an SUV?

Quieter, sure.

A lot less SUVs in Central and Eastern Europe than in North America. But yes, some of the pressure on limiting truck traffic through rural areas on Sundays (or on some roads in general) came from a large amount of fatal collisions involving trucks passing through, whereas ordinary car drivers drive more cautiously through these villages.

>A lot less SUVs in Central and Eastern Europe than in North America.

Not really the point but thanks. Pretty sure a collision with any 2000lb metal shape isn't going to go well.

>some of the pressure on limiting truck traffic through rural areas on Sundays (or on some roads in general) came from a large amount of fatal collisions involving trucks passing through, whereas ordinary car drivers drive more cautiously through these villages.

If that was the point, then boy was that a terrible solution. Rather than fixing the root cause you have 'fixed' the problem 1/7 days of the week. The other 6/7 days of the week you have drivers coming through so bad at driving they banned driving one day out of the week.

> Pretty sure a collision with any 2000lb metal shape isn't going to go well.

In spite of that weight, lower speeds plus more awareness from the locals driving cars combine to mean lower risk of fatality.

> Rather than fixing the root cause

What is it to fix the “root cause” according to you? Sometimes the building of a new motorway to take trucks away from those roads, takes years. To build other roads in a village where children can play may not be feasible in the short-term due to surrounding agriculture or marshy ground. If, as you favour, trucks were allowed to run through every day in the meantime, there would be no day of the week children could play so safely outside.

I can't speak for the commenter you're replying to, but there is an alternative to just building more highways in the form of traffic calming measures. Small villages and towns really shouldn't have through-traffic moving through them at high speeds. Or even moderate speeds, if we're being realistic; pedestrians will usually survive the initial impact at 20mph or less, whereas at 36mph it's usually fatal.[0]

Traffic calming sends a very clear, very obvious signal to drivers: slow the f*ck down, because you don't have a choice. It can include big tree branches hanging out over the road, narrower lanes, pinchpoints, speed humps and raised pedestrian crossings, and more.[1] Many of which are relatively low-cost to implement. Certainly, it's far cheaper than building a new highway.

I doubt that those rules were implemented strictly because of pedestrian safety versus expectations of Sunday as a "rest day" versus latching onto it as a post hoc justification--or really just an extra perk--for the rule. And hey, if it does make Sunday a bit safer for kids to play, it's not like that's a bad thing. It's just that the next thought should be "well, how do we make the other six days safer as well?"

0. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/speed-management/traffic-cal...

1. https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-...

Some roads aren't even open to non-locals on weekends (no through road for motorized traffic). Here in Switzerland, for example: https://lenews.ch/2018/05/24/swiss-mountain-passes-to-be-res...

That was the most interesting to me since Sunday evening is one of the heaviest trucking days of the week here. If you're coming back from an all weekend event on the Interstate it will be jam packed with big rigs.

> The truck edged out of a driveway and began, slowly, to turn left onto the road, blocking traffic in both directions. It was as if someone had erected a big steel wall.

I'm guessing that the charges were likely dropped because they couldn't prove that the truck suddenly entered a lane of traffic, having no right-of-way, and leaving the oncoming vehicle no time to stop.

"If you need 3 trailers, time to go back to freight trains."

Trains can only run on train tracks.

The tracks/train stations don't always go close to where the freight needs to go.

It is bordering on impossible to build new rail infrastructure to get freight where it needs to go.

It takes a lot longer to ship something on a train than on a truck.

Add on the fact that transport in general is getting more expensive, and I don't think more regulations on trucking is the right answer.

Just install the guards on the side of trailers and be done with it...

The answer is more, smaller, trucks / vans. If trucking creates jobs then a great way to create MORE jobs is to have smaller trucks. With smaller loads you lower the element of danger as well as lowering the barrier to entry. Additionally with smaller loads transfer's can be accomplished much more quickly with smaller equipment. Hot shot trucking is already pretty popular and typically works out to be cheaper. The idea overall idea would be an expansion of the interior ports network with loads small enough that drivers can self service.

>The answer is more, smaller, trucks / vans.

leading to more resource usage?

Trucking is expensive. If you care about cost, you're gonna trade off time to use a more cost efficient method, like a train.

Where trucks do have the advantage is truckers though. You can saddle them with debt and take all their money as varying fees, then reposses their home and get some new rube to take out a loan to buy it from you.

The truckers are plentiful, and willing to bleed our for a couple crumbs, which is a much better deal than trains where the conductors are union employees. It's much harder to make them take out debt to pay you more

Nothing is cheaper or more efficient and green then shipping by rail. We used to have an amazing rail network in NA (eu still does) and we basically have letf it fall into ruin and become a shell of what would constitute a functioning railway. It literally has done everything possible to kill passenger rail and make shipping via rail painful / unreliable.

If we had not trucking wouldn’t be the only option and we would be better for it

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNkYNjADoZg

The US shifts the same order of magnitude of goods by train as trucks

The EU shifts about 10 times by truck as by train

Rail freight in the US is praiseworthy.

> Rail freight in the US is praiseworthy.

watch the video and get back to me on that statement.

Actually US freight train system is ahead of EU. It's just the passenger system that's broken.

The US has a better freight rail system than the EU. It’s why passenger trains suck. We inverted the priorities.

You just have a multimodal container, that you lift off a train car and onto an artic trailer.

This is a solved problem.

> I now heard of trucks with 3 trailers but never saw one.

In Oregon, they are only allowed on I-5 between Eugene and Portland, must be less than 105 feet total, and not allowed at night, weekends, holidays, etc.

They use shorter trailers.. but man, that last trailer is doing lots of swaying back and forth..

Trucking deregulation began several months before Reagan was elected.

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