American Trucking Association Says: Don't Draft! - id's two websites promoting it
 

ATA Notes Resurgence of Dangerous Practice Known as ?Drafting?

June 7, 2007


ALEXANDRIA, Va. ? The American Trucking Associations is urging automobile drivers to avoid the dangerous practice of tailgating heavy trucks in efforts to increase fuel economy. The nation?s largest trucking industry trade group also is advising fleet safety directors to warn their drivers and owner-operators about the resurgence of this dangerous practice among automobile drivers, known as ?drafting.?

?Drafting? involves driving a car very close behind a truck to use the reduction of wind resistance to reduce the amount of energy needed to propel the auto.

?Few driving behaviors are more dangerous on our highways than drafting,? said ATA President and CEO Bill Graves. ?Drivers who practice this unsafe behavior are often out of the field of vision of the truck driver and are unable to see around the truck. ?Drafting? is unsafe, illegal and significantly increases the chances of injury and death. This practice compromises the safety of everyone on the nation?s highways and must not be considered a viable means of extending fuel mileage.?

ATA recently learned that drafting is being promoted by two Web sites dedicated to ?hypermiling? and several recent news articles have described the hazardous fad. Hypermiling is an invented term for achieving high fuel economy by several means, including dangerous ones such as driving partly on the right shoulder, over-inflating tires, coasting with the ignition off and ?drafting? behind tractor-trailers. Unfortunately, a segment about drafting shown recently on the Discovery Channel show ?Mythbusters? is bound to prompt some drivers to try this stunt, which the show?s hosts called ?suicidal.? ATA is working to educate the public on safe following distances through its Share the Road safety program.

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Unfortunately, ATA's own PR effort to convince people not to do this is also bound to prompt some drivers to try this stunt.

damn they pin pointed us on that one

I don't think GS promotes drafting, does it? I don't believe any of the top 5 vehicles (at least) in the top 10 list do it anyway.

And it's never mentioned without the safety risks also being raised.

yeah, I wonder if we're one of the sites mentioned.

I personally think that drafting is silly. There is enough you can do without losing your life in order to save gas.

i think that we are one of the two are we not? i think i know of one other site (greenmpg) that is hypermileing

I try not to spend too much near the sides and hind end of tractor-trailers because of the debris and their blindspots. Unfortunately heavy traffic often involves driving in closer proximity than most people would like. I mean 6 car lengths or so is a lot of real estate and is usually hard to come by. In such cases, I wonder how many troopers will pull over otherwise innocent drivers in their zeal to catch tailgaters.

BTW, isn't it equally dangerous for truckers to tailgate cars? This happens to me no matter what speed I drive. I think there's a lot of double standard going on here. In fact since a car can be out of the field of the truck driver's frontal vision, combined with the fact that a car has shorter stopping distances, we may be putting the cart before the horse. ;)

yeah i know where your coming from on this one its goes both ways ive been talegated really bad by big trucks. if there really going i try to get out of there way (pull over on the side of the road sometimes)

I think 'size' leads some truckers to think they own the roads and so somehow justifies this kind of dangerous bullying. The truth is, all taxpayers essentially pay for their industries' infrastructure. The fees they pay don't come close to covering the wear and tear they do on the roads, yet we all get to pay to repair. Oh, did I forget to say "rant=on" ? ;)

rant=off

IIRC, in his interviews, Wayne recommends tailgating at 1 sec interval or greater (~6 car lengths at 60mph) in addition to ridgeriding. Besides endangering anyone on the shoulder, ridgeriding adds the additional risk of hitting a soft shoulder, or more likely, picking up tire-puncturing debris on the side of the road.

Truckers have a 'prank' of deliberately driving as close as possible to a trooper standing beside a car on the shoulder. This practice is known as 'dusting' and resulted in the death of CT state trooper Lieutenant Thomas F. Carney in 1982. The trucker didn't even stop but was caught and convicted after a forensics lab revealed the imprint of the trooper's right arm patch left on the truck's trailer.