So, at noon, on a sunny day, the person that writes the DMV test for the a California Commercial Drivers License sees a fully loaded 18 wheeler moving 55 MPH on a paved road that is 426 feet away. Knowing that total stopping is about 387, the DMV writer feels safe to cross in front of the rig. The truck driver sees the pedestrian. The truck driver thinks back to the DMV test that indicates the total stopping distance for a truck is "More than the length of a football field". Not being a fan of football, the truck driver does not immediately know or remember the total stopping distance in feet, nor does the truck driver really have a perception of how long a football field is. The truck driver recalls that it is 100 yards, or is it 120 yards? Are the end zones counted or not? Wait, that's football, does the _DMV_ count the end zones? Is it even 100 or 120 yards? It might be some other number. The truck driver thinks to convert 120 yards to 360 feet for the safest number available at the moment. Like the DMV test writer, the truck driver knows that perception distance _was_ about 142 feet. They both know the reaction distance is about 60 feet. And the both know the total stopping distance would be about 387 feet. But they both know all that is considering ideal perception, reaction distance, and braking distance, so they allow for slightly more time. The truck driver cannot be certain at the moment, how much time has actually past. Anyhow, the truck driver applies the brakes as soon as humanly able and stops as quick as the situation allows. What the truck driver did not consider in the moment, is how much time was added to total stopping distance by thinking about the length of a football field. The truck strikes the DMV writer at 35 MPH. Sufficiently fatal in this case.

Problem solved.




I’m in the process of getting my CDL and am annoyed by a great deal of the DMV information that is entirely unhelpful for operating commercial vehicle safely. Such as exclusive double and triple negative questions on the test (What should you not do when situation A is not happening, but 2 is not happening, unless Q is not the case and Δ is not being applied?) Yah, I don’t even remember the question, just all the “not”s, “if”s, and “unless”es interlaced with something about a stop sign. How complicated must a question about a stop sign be? Some of the DMV’s information is blatantly false (probably because it is merely legally true). For example, DMV says halogen headlights pose no fire hazard. Really? I would think that any surface that gets three times hotter than a road flare could possible pose a fire risk in the right circumstances. I don’t care what they say, I will avoid positioning my headlights near anything flammable. Other information is completely useless. DMV’s question: why does speed increase when going downhill? The DMV’s answer is “Gravity”. WHY DOES WHY MATTER?! It could be caused by vortices, aether streams, mass pulsations, ultra-mundane corpuscles, electromagnetic radiation, non-constant planck lengths, pollution from quantum crystal-elf civilizations; drivers need to know and compensate for the fact that speed increases when going down hill REGARDLESS OF WHY! There is no situation where ‘why’ matters to this. Ada Lovelace, Einstein, Aristotle, Telsa, and Yogi Berra were all equally equipped to understand that speed increases when going down hill. It applies equally to driving on other planets! CA DMV, Please remove useless and confusing information from the written test and the CDL drivers manual. Inform and test me on safely operating a commercial vehicle, not if I paid attention in physics class, English class, or to Monday night football.