Portland Truck Accident Attorney

Tips to Avoid A Truck Accident
For Bicycle, Car Drivers, Motorcycle Riders and Pedestrians

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Large semi trucks present hidden dangers
For car, motorcycle, pedestrian, and bicycle riders.

Truck drivers often have the challenge of not only operating the large vehicle in tight spaces, but also may have blind spots due to the physical girth of the semi.

Truck Driver Blind Spots

Auto, motorcycle, bicycle and pedestrian traffic can be safer understanding that a truck driver has these blind spots and give the semi truck the needed space accordingly.

Traffic accident statistics help us to understand what the problems are and therefor how to hopefully avoid accidents.

Pedestrians and bicyclists are particularly vulnerable to the most severe repercussions of a truck accident. This type of truck vs. pedestrian or truck vs. bicycle accident most commonly occurs at intersections.

Where are the truck driver's blind spots?

Because of the height of many semi trucks, the driver may not see or just barely see any evidence of smaller cars, bicycles, pedestrians, or motorcycles that are right next to them.

If the road way is congested and urban the truck driver has many complicated tasks and the cognitive strain of maintaining awareness of all actors on the road becomes more constrained.

A bicycle or pedestrian may be close along the side of a semi truck and not be aware that they are hard to be seen. This is not the normal in regular cars and even suvs or normal half ton, even one ton, trucks. In Europe, there have been transportation experiments with mirrors in intersections and extra driver mirrors placed onto the big rigs in order to give the driver the ability to better see into these blind spots.

As below, the bike is potentially below and too close to the semi truck to be visible to the driver.

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