[dmurray]

> At 0.5 mph differential, the overtake takes 291 seconds — over a minute of blocking the outside lane. Annoying, but it gains the driver 5.0 extra miles across a working day.

The driver gets there 5 minutes earlier in exchange for causing a 7-km tailback multiple times per day? That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away: the truck in front is limited to 90 km/h, you're limited to 90 km/h, you should expect to travel in convoy with that truck even through manufacturing tolerances mean your limiter is actually set to 90.5.

If the 0.5 km/h is actually valuable to the trucking industry, they can invest in more precise limiters at scale.

[matsemann]

> Most assume the truck driver is being inconsiderate.

From the article. Then goes on to show exactly how they're inconsiderate with maths. How they're not seeing it is baffling.

[cbdevidal]

Seems to me that the slower truck is really the inconsiderate one here. If you’re already slower, tap the brakes a little and let the other guy slide in.

[JoachimS]

Or just take the foot of the pedal for a while.

[tobinfricke]

Seems like a game-theoretic problem

Taking their foot off the gas for a second only hurts them

[wjnc]

Nope, it cascades back to all those in the same lane who’ve not yet decided on overtaking. It’s multi player game theory. Easiest way out I can think of is punishing both those too slow and too fast to create equilibrium. Haven’t thought about what this would do to other traffic going from the left lane to the outbound right via a mass of trucks in exactly the same speed.

[hulitu]

Or just step on the brakes. This will teach him about safety distance.

[cucumber3732842]

> How they're not seeing it is baffling.

It's like when a big co says "now we care greatly about the environment" before going on to detail their plan for something that's laughably bad for it.

They see it. They just phrased the article that way because they don't want to catch hand wringing and hate comments from every idiot who does the exact same thing in their car with slightly different values for the variables outlined and without any of the physics/economics excuses to justify it.

Edit: I hope. I can't read minds, you may very well be right and they don't see it.

[RobotToaster]

From a commercial perspective, you would think the fuel savings from slipstreaming would more than make up for those five minutes.

[noah_buddy]

At proper breaking distance, it’s probably negligible.

[cucumber3732842]

It probably still does fleet wide. Remember, the other driver isn't gonna brake hard without reason because he has an electronic narc in the cab that will tell his boss every time he does. The flipside of this is that the driver in the back isn't gonna imperil their "stats" by tailgating to save fuel because their own electronic narc will report that to their boss.

And even if the company crunches the numbers and finds that tailgating saves a ton of fuel, they can't say "well ackshually guys, you can tailgate if it's another truck" to their drivers because society is full of dishonest jerks and we therefore can't have an adult discussion about just exactly how much diesel exhaust you have to save to make the marginal increase in semi trucks rear ending each other worth it.

Heck, the company probably can't even run that fuel vs braking analysis overtly because Pinto. Isn't progress great.

[benj111]

They would but the driver isn't paid for the fuel saving so he spends 5 extra minutes to save the company money.

[HPsquared]

There's a diffuse, but I suspect large, economic cost to delaying other vehicles.

[andrewflnr]

You mean like delaying all the people trying to go full speed in the fast lane?

[throwaway198846]

You just made me imagine switching lanes microtransactions as a solution which made my soul shudder in a deep seated disgust, so I had to share it.

[HPsquared]

Enforced by cameras, of course.

[toss1]

>>That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away

Yes, and the regulation should NOT be limiting passing or requiring the slower truck to brake

It should allow a "Push To Pass" button that allows a 10mph boost for enough seconds to make a pass in a reasonable amount of distance so as to not create problems for other traffic.

Current technology would allow these to be easily limited to X uses per hour/day and even geo-fence the usage for safe zones (use could even be limited to passing lanes so the truck being passed cannot start a drag race to stay ahead). They could even require connectivity and disable it in poor road conditions.

The real people being inconsiderate are not so much the truckers (particularly the slower trucker failing to yield and let the other one pass in a reasonable distance), as it is the regulators who created this mess.

[rluna828]

Using GPS to calibrate speedometers would solve this problem with fewer steps. GPS speedometers are accurate to 0.1 km/h.

[toss1]

That's no solution at all, and the tech is barely even lower than a passing option — both require detailed speed & time measurement, and having gps throttle governing 100% of the time is subject to all kinds of new issues where GPS isn't fully functioning, e.g., in dense trees, tunnels, cities....

And as to passing, the closer the two vehicles are in speed the loooonger it takes one to pass the other. Unless you get down to an absurd accuracy, one driver will notice he's got a little bit of pace on the other guy and will try to pass. And even with 0.0001% accuracy and 100% uptime (not going to happen), there will still be passing issues as some trucks may have issues where they aren't quite up to speed, but just a few km/hr under, and you're right back to the long passes.

Either outlaw passing, or allow it to happen at a reasonable pace.

[close04]

> That seems like exactly the kind of thing that should be regulated away

This is regulated via "no overtaking by trucks" [1] signs on portions of road that are susceptible to formation of queues, or more dangerous road conditions.

P.S. To bundle some replies:

> but they only apply during busy hours

Don't remember ever seeing the time interval next to these signs. They are tied more to the location than the time. But that's not bad? The goal is to avoid the worst issues, not to force trucks to drive in an ordered line for 8h straight. Traffic lights also sometimes turn to intermittent yellow late in the night. Why spend a few minutes alone in the middle of the street for a red light?

> Does it still make sense for that to be "default allow?" Why doesn't the trucking industry lobby for every Truck Overtaking zone

The default should be the the one that applies most of the time. Today that's the "allow overtake". I'm allowed to very slowly overtake in my car. And I've seen this when I was driving right at the speed limit and someone else was overtaking at something like 1cm/s. It was painful to watch, at some point I just slowed down a bit to let him get in front and release the left lane.

If you ban truck overtakes and allow them only in specific zones, you'll quickly have kilometers long truck queues that never get drained. For an overtake that takes 1 min at 90km/h the trucks traveled 1500m. Many highways are 2 lanes so just one slow truck on the right lane and one slow car on the left lane screw the entire highway. Those costs go to you whether you're in your car or buying something those trucks deliver.

[1] https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1728143251/vector/no-overta...

[schiffern]

Ahh, the power of defaults.

Does it (still) make sense for this to be "default allow?" Why not have the trucking industry lobby for every Truck Overtaking zone, instead of making residents lobby for the opposite?

[entuno]

I've also seen roads that have these kind of signs, but they only apply during busy hours.

However, as with any traffic controls they're useless if they're not actually enforced. Which is a shame, because it'd be absolutely trivial to automate that detection with cameras.

[Tade0]

Let dashcam footage be used as evidence of traffic violations and behold how quick will drivers themselves be to send every such piece of footage to the police.

[Tade0]

In Poland this default was changed some time ago. Specifically trucks are not allowed to overtake on two-lane highways and express roads:

https://trafficban.com/news.1590.html

There's an exception made for cases where there's a vehicle on the right lane going much slower than the speed limit for trucks.

The public broadly agrees that this move was beneficial, as the miniscule benefit of some trucks arriving 15min earlier overall was not worth slowing down everyone else, particularly light commercial vehicles.

[542354234235]

It kind of annoys me that the article says the people trapped behind the trucks are just inconvenienced, but the truck driver gains time and money. Considering commuting to and from work is what most people are doing on the road, that is exactly time and money. It really could be seen as truck drivers stealing dozens, if not hundreds, of minutes from other drivers to give themselves 5 minutes.

[cucumber3732842]

>It really could be seen as truck drivers stealing dozens, if not hundreds, of minutes from other drivers to give themselves 5 minutes.

People cut truckers a brake because due to the physics and rules they can only go so fast and only change speed so quickly.

The same cannot be said for the person camping the fast/passing lane because all the entering and exiting of the slow lane "is scary" or whatever. Their normal car can most definitely meet (and exceed) the expected norm for the lane they're traveling in.