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Comment by aashaykumar92 | Hacker News Reader

What a neat idea! But if these trucks are PURPOSEFULLY breaking the laws and continuing to go through the tunnel, I am not sure that this solution will hold up for too long; after all, the clever truck drivers will know it is a mere illusion.

Furthermore, instead of a water screen, wouldn't a brick screen be more effective? Personally, I wouldn't mind going through water nearly as much as I would be running into a brick wall. Nonetheless, as I said before, a really neat idea and definitely a solution for some instances--limitations need to be addressed though.

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Err, they're not going through the tunnel. They're too tall for it. They crash into the roof of the tunnel, causing severe damage to the infrastructure, their trucks and anyone who happens to pass by.

There's likely some space left between actual tunnel height and truck height limitation (for safety), and clever driver's incentive to go through the tunnel (if it's a nice shortcut) might be stronger than any kind of sign.

No. http://gizmodo.com/5955244/watch-this-bridge-destroying-doze...

Can you, maybe, also cite a trustworthy source on how many trucks actually went through the tunnel without a problem? I imagine there're clever drivers who know precisely metrics of their vehicle and tunnel regulations. I think we rarely hear about those cases on the news, though.

Edit: if you're responding “No” to whether there's leeway between actual tunnel height and regulations, I'd like to hear a source on that as well—I couldn't find one, but common sense suggests that in such a case then there'd be enough incidents of trucks with allowed height damaged because of, say, a bump on the road.

I don't think the water is used to make the driver think he's about to drive into a wall of water: I figured the water is used as a medium for projecting the huge stop sign in front of them?

Funny, I also thought a stop sign wasn't severe enough (I wanted the water screen to project an oncoming semi to scare the sh*t out of the driver), but illusions like that would cause some drivers to panic and endanger motorists around them.

"would cause some drivers to panic and endanger motorists around them."

About to smash out the top of a tunnel and crush the neighboring cars under your rubble? If you're not already in a panic, its certainly time to start...

I think you missed the point, and most of the video. If the truck continued it would have crashed into the tunnel, tearing off the top of the truck and possibly taking days to clean up and fix. The video showed one of those accidents.

I don't think ignoring the illusion and trying to continue would do him any good.

The drivers aren't doing it purposely. They have been driving for 16 hours, are in an unfamiliar city, and are almost asleep at the wheel.

16 hours!? Wow. The EU has a legal maximum of 10 hours per day — and that's only allowed twice a week, ordinarily 9 hours, with at least 45 minutes break every 45 minutes.

And the trucks are controlled, still drivers manage to trick the regulators: "I'll drive your shift now you'll get mine once" etc.

If you deliberately put yourself in a situation where you're operating a machine without the mental faculties you need to do it safely, then I think we can safely say that you deliberately caused the accident, even though you may not have thought, in so many words, "I think I'll go cause an accident now."

People are probably more afraid of losing their jobs. They also probably think it won't happen to them.

I doubt the driver was scared of losing his job. I would say that the blame may fall, in part, on the company. I have a friend who owns a business which does a lot of trucking. If they work overtime, these drivers can make $70k+ a year (including benefits, health). For a job with few qualifications needed, that's pretty good. A lot of businesses in the area actually have too few truckers.

Anyway, the point is that by working overtime you can make a good living being a driver. This is why you can find so many truck drivers drivin tired. As such, there are strict rules in place at my friend's business that prevent drivers from driving for too many hours / too many hours without a break. With GPS and whatnot, this is quite easy to monitor and enforce. As a result, along with other rules and superb maintenance, my friend's business has a superb safety record. There is still the occasional accident (can't stop 'em all), but something like this incident has never occurred.

Well, if people are deliberately endagering lives of others for fear of losing their jobs; then maybe we should ensure that they'll fear the legal consequences more than their boss?

For example, if you temporarily take away the truck drivers licence as a punishment for driving too many hours without rest (as EU does, for example), then they'll make sure that they don't drive without rest, since they will definitely lose their driving jobs if they do.

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