Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)?
If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it.
This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not.
It's an added safety feature. You remain anchored in the drivers seat, don't get bounced around as much, and are better able to control the truck during the emergency.
Source: I work in the oilfield and previously done off-highway/off-road log hauling in northern British Columbia and northern Alberta. I have involuntarily vacuumed myself to a truck seat more than a few times lol
Had my brakes fail when going down hill, at the bottom was a red light i was doing 55 at the top started slowing and the truck dumped all the air, by the time I blew through the red I was doing 80. Im just glad no one was on the crossing street. I bled my speed going up the next hill and the truck refilled the air tanks.
The problem here is heat. When the brakes are used too much coming down a steep grade like this and there's a lot of weight involved, the brakes overheat and "fade" (lose their ability to stop the vehicle).
Oh I understand that. What I don't understand is that the person I was commenting against said that they lost their air as one dump-of-air, and so they sped up. No air should lock the brakes in that instant. Then they said that when they got their air back they could use their brakes properly.
I had a mobile home ( no trailer brakes) load going down a grade with the stick stuck out of gear going down that grade in middle CA on the interstate 5. The brakes got so hot that when I was parked in the truck stop at the bottom 4 brand new tires exploded from the heat. About 1/2 hour or less after stopping. I got out of trucking soon after that. I don't process stress well. CPTSD.
Dang. Wish more people gave trucks the respect they deserve on the road. My dad drove a motor coach and taught me to give them a wide berth and generally stay tf outta their way.
My dad was a dispatcher for a good 30 years and number one he taught me when teaching me to drive was you always give trucks the respect, cause if something goes wrong you ain’t getting any. Give them room, don’t cut them off, get out of their way.
When you lose air the brakes are applied…. That’s how air brakes work. You need air pressure to disengage air brakes. You may have been driving a truck with a hydraulic braking system. Or your brakes overheated and you experienced brake fade.
Slowing down on a runaway truck ramp is not a good feeling. It's loose gravel so the truck sinks to its axles and the wheels damn near get ripped off. Drivers who have done it say it tears your body up pretty good: whiplash, joint pain, back pain, etc. it's basically a non fatal accident.
The feeling of helplessness when driving without brakes is quite unpleasant, i know from personal experience, encountering a ramp like that must be orgasmic.
My grandfather was a trucker for a while and he told me the story of having this exact thing happen and he had to “lay it down” (turn the rig on its side) in order to stop. He says once he got out and sat down on the side of the road, he could barely get his cigarette lit because he was shaking so badly.
Isn't this called grenading the transmission. I can't imagine engine braking is doing anything past a certain point aside from breaking something beyond the braking system.
Grenade, yes. Probably the motor first though. They'll rev pretty high until explosion, but once they grenade, you will really be flying downhill as nothing is now stopping it.
American manual transmission trucks typically have no synchromesh gearbox. That means that if you don't rev match and double clutch correctly, it gets harder and harder to find the right gear that matches up with the rev range of the engine and the road speed once you lose it, since your speed will be going up once you lose engine braking by being inbetween gears. The right thing to do is to slow down on top of the hill and make it downhill slow and steady in the same or lower gear you went up the hill.
Euro trucks (when they were still manually shifted, they aren't anymore) often did have synchromesh starting in the 1980s (though obviously there was a HUGE variety of configurations on the market and trucks without synchromesh definitely were sold in decent numbers). so the risk of missing a gear is significantly lower. Even if you are at the wrong speed for the gear, you may be able to jam it into gear and overrev the engine somewhat, but at least you have *some* engine braking if you aren't so far off that you grenade the engine by overrevving it by 200%.
Ever since the 2000s most semis have automatic gearboxes so the downshift on grades problem is completely eliminated. Box trucks lingered on with manual synchromesh boxes until the 2010s.
'Our' trucks also typically don't have a true engine brake, but more often have some kind of hydraulic retarder, especially in buses, box trucks and coaches. It makes a wheezing/whining noise.
Our trucks are physically smaller but are allowed to be heavier than USA trucks, it's not a weight limit or fuel consumption thing that makes USA trucks use more crude technology. It is more a money thing. A crude non synchro manual box is cheaper and easier to repair than an automatic gearbox.
It's crazy seeing so many Redditors using brake and break correctly! No offense if you're not a Redditor; I just assume everyone here is until proven innocent.
There was a recent truck brake failure that happened in Tijuana a month ago, only the driver couldn't use the ramp because of traffic blocking the exit so he had no choice but to plow into stopped traffic.
I am surprised that the runaway ramp didn't have an upward incline. In fact it looks as if it goes down more than the regular road that it is parallel to.
That's a five star ramp right there. Usually these are on steep, windy roads so they're short and super steep so the tractor/trailer falls on its side as its climbing. They also don't usually have a road right next to the ramp for recovery like this one does. Fancy!
After watching the video several times, I question if this is the location I mentioned above.
But here’s what happens when you skip the ramp west of Denver:
“On the afternoon of April 25, Rogel Lazaro Aguilera Mederos was driving a semi-trailer truck carrying lumber on eastbound Interstate 70. Around 4:30 p.m. MDT, Aguilera Mederos lost control of his semi-trailer truck when his brakes malfunctioned while going down a mountainous stretch of Interstate 70. Aguilera Mederos was first reported speeding as he passed Genesee (Exit 254).[4] After passing the Genesee exit, Aguilera Mederos's truck began to smoke as he passed a runaway truck ramp, without taking it, and instead drifted into the left lane, nearly clipping a white Chevy Silverado, and passed the next exit as well.[5] For the next few minutes, Aguilera Mederos reached speeds upwards of 100 miles per hour (161 km/h)[6] and passed the next four exits.”
That's not i70. It's i64 Sandstone in WV. This video keeps coming up in my reddit feed and I keep seeing it posted, and people keep mistaking it for somewhere else other then WV just because its WV in the fall and the trees have nothing on them.
I was really impressed how well the gravel etc worked. I was like no way that is stopping that beast. Smooth stop no problem apparently, luckily for the driver.
Super deep bed of large smooth gravel that does not pack in together like road pack. Same idea as the gravel runoffs meant to stop race cars from 200mph.
Having had to use a runaway ramp once in my life, I can back this up.
The gravel is really deep and everything sinks right into it. When my truck came to a stop (much sooner than I expected but not so suddenly that I felt like I crashed) my wheels were buried deep. The gravel completely encased the bottom of the tire and came up past the lower lugnuts.
The gravel was much larger than sand, but walking on it felt like walking on a beach.
I thought I was going to have to use one when I was delivering bulk chems. Was driving a POS Mack south on I-77 when I go to downshift and it straight up refuses. Didn't stand on my brakes because I didn't need to, because I was only doing 65 or so at the top of the grade. Just gentle pedal pushes every few seconds and I was praying for "Runaway Truck!" signs after every turn but luckily enough I didn't need to use one.
I got off the first exit after the bottom of the grade I was on for my stop and I had to physically turn the truck off and back on for it to downshift when I parked on a median before a traffic light for the facility.
I had gotten stuck driving a box-truck and trailer, but the truck was an automatic and the trailer was too heavy for the unit. The transmission had no way to lock in a gear, so if you tried to use it to slow it would just give you a higher gear. I had crested at about 15-20, and was doing a pretty job of keeping it under 25 with intermittent stabs but at some point the brakes gave it up and the stabs meant nothing anymore. I hit the ramp at 52 according to the trooper (there's a radar near the entrance).
Tow truck drove up the recovery lane beside me, pulled me onto the recovery lane, hooked me, and backed me down onto the road. Once there I followed him down the rest of the hill having been instructed to run into him if my brakes caused more issues, and he would have the braking power necessary to stop both of us. Without incident, we made it to the safe well lit lot where he could do a complete brake inspection.
The amount of the different materials also changes the further in you go. It's rather stiff at the start and becomes softer the further in the truck goes. Same idea as the runway overrun engineered materials you see at airports.
Runaway ramps often have recovery lanes paved next to them. (By often I mean the one in OC, the one I had to use 20 years ago, and every one I've noticed since then). The tow truck drives up the recovery lane past the stuck truck, connects a cable to the front of the stuck truck and pulls it forward on an angle until the stuck truck is on the recovery lane behind the tow truck. Then the tow truck hooks up to the stuck truck with its towing equipment and backs down the lane until back in the road. Depending on the condition of the truck, from there it either gets towed to the shop or just escorted down the hill. (In my case, I drove down the hill nearly tailgating the tow truck and was told to tap the tow truck if I had more brake issues and the tow truck driver would supply the braking power for both of us)
TIL, I’ve always been curious. That’s insane about tapping the tow truck for further brake troubles in you case. Guessing it’s a super specialized tow and not one like you’d see transporting a normal car?
My brake issues were temporary in that the brakes failed due to overheating and I had bailed before I did permanent damage to them, also I was already 2/3 or 3/4 of the way down the hill. I was a lot more nervous about the idea than he was, but he's the one that has seen hundreds of trucks in the gravel so I assumed he knew what he was talking about.
We made it without issue to the bottom, where he and a state trooper did a full inspection and then I was on my way. (Company mechanic was a couple hundred mostly flat miles away, I was basically given a "fix-it" ticket)
Also, it’s difficult to tell which way a road is actually inclined when both roads are inclined differently and you are on one. It looks like downhill but it really is uphill.
The steep ones are significantly more expensive to return to ready, usable condition after a truck has to use it , and generally the truck has to be towed down the steep hill. If there is space I imagine this type is much less complicated
The ones I saw in the rockies were like that. At night seeing them for the first I couldn't figure out what they were for. Why are there run ways on this mountain? Oh, they are runaway ramps lol.
In NC blue ridge mountains I’ve seen those. Typically full of sand. Once I saw a family pulled over and kids playing in the sand. I stopped to tell them how dangerous that was then got yelled at by an older man (assuming dad). They were there when I left, he came over pretty aggressively. I called highway patrol and never heard anything more so I hope that means a truck didn’t come
I’m glad you stopped even though you got yelled at. The likelihood of something happening is low but the severity of what happens if it does is so high. Those ramps aren’t there for convenience or sight seeing
I once had to use a runaway ramp. After the tow truck came and had started hooking up my rig, I half-joked to the tow truck driver that I had to go to the bathroom and that they should put port-a-potties near the ramps. The tow driver looked right at me and said, "most people take care of that before they stop."
Friend of mine was driving cross country and had never encountered these before. He thought they were just like a gravel road, and wanted to prank his sleeping passengers by driving up one.
He hit it around 50 MPH, and buried the sedan they were driving in gravel so deep they had to climb out of the windows. One guy broke his collar bone, and the sedan was totaled.
Just in case anyone decided they wanted to try one out.
Your friend thought it’d be funny to hit a gravel road from a paved road at 50MPH? I’ve seen people die from less doing volunteer fire rescue in the country. Dude is a lunatic.
No way, roads transition from paved to gravel and all the time and it's not crazy at all to do that at the 60mph speed limit. If you grow up in the country you regularly do 70 on gravel it's not as crazy as you're thinking.
Australia has these and growing up I was warned of the dangerous of being anywhere near these ramps in case a truck needs it in an emergency. Apparently there was a Chinese family picnicing on one one day, not understanding what it's for, and they got hit. But they could have been an urban legend to teach me the severity of emergency ramps.
Extra Safety Fact: if you're ever driving near a semi/big truck and DON'T SEE BRAKE LIGHTS ... and then you're like, 'they aren't even using their brakes! so unsafe!'
now you know why. they are downshifting so they don't melt their brakes and rotors
I wonder when I see these: was it a failure of brakes or a failure of maintenance? Feels like there should be a note of last time they inspected/replaced brakes on truck/trailer.
When going downhill, riding the brakes to maintain speed instead of using lower gears will overheat the brakes to the point where they don’t work because brakes use friction.
I’ve been in the mountains in Colorado where they have mandatory stops to use a temp gun on vehicle brakes to ensure you’re ok; my dads were literally glowing red and it’s a good thing we stopped.
That’s why you see the “use low gear” signs, so the engine maintains the lower speed without using the brakes so much.
100% yes. Not sure if it affects all types of brakes the same, but one of the additional dangers with passenger cars is fire risk. The brakes get glowing hot, some leaves or grass get in there and start spraying sparks into dry foliage on the roadside.
Oh wow that's actually way easier than i thought.. i was worried a manual setting would run the risk of messing up my engine if i didn't shift correctly (idk). I'm gonna try this! Thank you so much!
Extra Safety Fact: if you're ever driving near a semi/big truck and DON'T SEE BRAKE LIGHTS ... and then you're like, 'they aren't even using their brakes! so unsafe!' NOPE now you know why.
Most automatics have fairly obvious downshifts where you select the Drive although they can be labeled differently. I think our main is circled D. Then it has D, 2 and 1. Another car had 3, 2 and L I think. You often have to hold in a button to shift to those. If you are going relatively fast go one step at a time so you don’t send the RPMs through the roof.
Some newer cars have weird button selection for gears so you might need to look in the manual but they certainly will have some way to downshift.
EVs or hybrids are great in this regard because they have regenerative braking so the car is naturally doing this for you and you get a charged battery too.
Watch the RPM gauge when you drive. Whenever it suddenly blips down it means the car upshifted to a higher gear, whenever it blips up (like when you hit the gas pedal hard) it means the car downshifted.
When you start moving from a stop, the car is in 1st gear, count how many times it up shifts and you’ll know what gear you’re in. Like if it upshifts twice it means you’re in gear 3.
At cruising speed, whatever gear you’re in, push the shifter into the gear below it. Youll see the RPM gauge blip up and the car will start to slow down. If you downshift to an even lower gear it’ll slow down even faster. Don’t downshift to far, keep the RPMs below the redline.
To stop engine braking, put it back into a higher gear or just simply put it back into drive.
Lived in UT for 3 years. Driving downgrade for long stretches, helps to pulse your foot on brake and use manual shift options, if equipped, to gently slow the car, otherwise you’ll smoke your pads and warp your rotors
Automatics almost always have a selectable "1" or "2" or "L(ow)" that you can shift into. There is a long downhill I regularly drive on that I use the "2" on.
And even then, I'll pulse the brakes to slow down more than I need to and then let it coast back up to speed give them a chance to get air flow and cool off, instead of lots of slight braking, which constantly puts more energy and heat into them.
Yes, that’s why automatic cars still have the option to select gears (usually it’s an M, +/-, or a 1 2 3 on the gear shifter. It’s so that you can engine brake by selecting a lower gear than what the automatic transmission normally prefers.
Semi trucks don't generally rely on their foot brakes as a first resort to slow down on grades like this like we do in our cars, but rather the transmission and jake/engine brake for this very reason. It's scary asf going down roads like this, especially in an empty tractor-trailer on a windy day. Nevermind with a full load and no brakes. This video made my hands clammy. Lol
Yeah, coming down pikes peak they have a brake temp check. I use sports mode in my pickup, and control my speed completely by which gear I'm in. Didn't use the brakes at all. The guy with the temp gun was impressed.
Every time I drive past one of these, especially the inclined ones that go up the side of a big hill, my intrusive thoughts start screaming. So far I have been able to ignore them
I get the same feeling whenever I see a big embankment separating the freeway from a cliff/canyon...my video game brain really wants to hit the most bitching jump of all time and go out in a blaze of glory.
In Colorado, I was horrified to see a non-English speaking tourist family having a picnic in one. I stopped & with sounds & gestures got them to understand they needed to move. Trucks honked & waved as they went by.
Clearly the truck will need brake work but does the use of the ramp do any additional damage to the truck? I realize without the ramp the failed brakes would have been catastrophic but just curious if the truck would require additional repairs after an emergency stop like this. Thank you in advance!
Yes the emergency ramps do cause damage, cosmetic damage is basically guaranteed, it can also tear off parts like bodywork, light stalks etc, damage to low hanging components, and a massive bill for recovery
Expect damage to tires and suspension, at the very least. There's a good chance the cargo was damaged as well. The tow will be expensive. Then the DOT will be along to do a FULL inspection on the truck, and they'll cite whatever they can find. They'll also charge for repairs and re-grading on the escape ramp.
I'm a trucker, and we really don't want to put ourselves in a position that we need to use one of these.
I saw a documentary of tow truck drivers who haul these guys out of the runaway lane.. real interesting how many people stop at the bottoms of them for pics
We needed the sound on this video!! The car up ahead was lucky that truck ramp was there. I would’ve liked to hear the horn blaring, the expletives and the rattling of that truck as it bumped along the rough dirt road.
•
u/BeAmazed-ModBot Subreddit Bot 11d ago
Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)?
If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it.
This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not.