On October 9, Seniors attended a presentation during club period from PennDOT, or Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, on driving safety. The presentation primarily focused on statistics of trucks to cars with statistics on many kinds of crashes. The presenters also described how a truck can take one football field of distance to come to a complete stop, and that is only at 55 mph. At 65 mph, a truck can take up to two football fields to come to a complete stop. Students learned to pay attention to truck blind spots and to be patient and learn to keep space when there is a truck sharing the road. The presenters then showed videos on dash cams about crashes between cars and trucks and showed how a car could appear literally invisible to a truck driver.
Students were able to walk around a semi-trailer truck parked outside later in the day, and were even able to sit inside of it. When walking around, the presenters from that event described the debri that comes flying out from truck wheels, since the wheels on a truck can cause debri to break a windshield. There is also importance of keeping distance with the back and sides of a semi, since underride crashes are common. When students sat in the truck, they got to see–or rather, were not able to see–where the blind spots were. There were several vehicles strategically placed in the parking lot around the truck, and one of the presenters asked the student where a certain vehicle was. Students had to check the mirrors, look out the front, look out the sides, and tell if they could see the vehicle. They also showed the student where each of the vehicles were when they got out of the semi. They had two cars right next to the truck on either side, right at the start of the blind spots. Then, they had a school van parked towards the further part of the blindspot. They had another van in the back to show how far back cars should be for the semi to see when following behind. Also, the presenter had a cutout picture of his kid in the front to show that truck drivers can not see what is in front of them, and students need to practice the importance of making eye contact with the driver when crossing a street. The presenter then asked the students questions based on the presentation during the club period to make sure they were paying attention.
Two seniors who enjoyed this presentation were Madden Dietrich and Bethany Stufflet. Madden said “I thought it was very informative, since I did not know about blind spots on trucks at all, and we got to see how big the blind spots were. Plus, we got to sit in the driver’s side and see the blind spots ourselves, which I thought was cool.” Bethany says they “were very useful and informational. I have been using what they told us to make sure that I do not get into crashes with trucks.”
For more information, visit: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/penndot
