Colorado Expands Chain Laws and Adds New Left Lane Restrictions for Commercial Vehicles

Just one more step in the Californication of Colorado.

Most of those left lane restrictions aren't new, the previous were a mix of trucks must use right lane and minimum left lane speeds. All of which were mostly ignored and not enforced. The only place you see any regular enforcement of truck restrictions is WB out of Eisenhower, and occasionally WB Vail and EB Georgetown.

I don't remember the last time I saw a truck pulled over dropping into Denver, which is posted 45 for trucks and rarely adhered to. I normally drop off Vail just below the 45mph Truck speed and constantly have trucks blowing by like I'm chained to a stump. That's every trip.

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All the things listed above have been in place, and ya still got "drivers" doing 10-25mph over posted truck speed through Glenwood canyon, down the grades, ect. Some because "they've been driving for 30 years and there didn't ever used to be posted truck speed and it the others screwing it up" the others seem to be people who are working their tech support call center job while driving.

Personally I was born an air sick low lander in the flat lands of Nebraska. I have a great respect for the mountains and I'm the guy that knows if I'm going from Denver to Eagle loaded it's going to take me near 3 hours because I take it slow and easy, stay in the right line and obey the posted limits. I'm the guy others are cussing out but you know what. I can drive those mountains a million times too slow, but I can only go too fast once.

Also I carry chains year round due to muddy job sites so the chain thing doesn't bother me either.

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They picked on me on the radio the first time I ran over the Rockies. And old guy once told me, 'you go down a little slower than you went up and you'll be fine'.

Coming back east out of Denver on I-70, some cowboy was really whooping it up with other drivers. Called me out as a flatlander with the Florida plates. We rolled by him in the runaway ramp and my wife waved to him out the window while I asked him how he was going to get his load to the customer when he was buried to the frame. He was cussing until we ran out of coax.

I made it back to N.C., dropped my load, reloaded and made it back to Miami without burning any brakes or heat checking the drums. I wonder how long dude sat before he was dragged out and paid the costs to repair the ramp.

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I'm up there at least once a week, the stupidity is amazing. A couple months ago I was coming all Vail with a fat load and a tailwind, so I had to come down a gear lower than normal. I get passed by an empty System truck headed over to get his drywall, and he lights up the radio with this gem: "Carhauler, truck speed limit is 45 not 35." As in the truck speed limit determines the safe speed to go down the mountain and not the capabilities of the truck! WTAF???

The training system in trucking is broken. I'm so sick of these guys who are trained by freaking idiots who have no business teaching somebody how to take out the trash much less drive a damn truck in the mountains! If the feds want to make Trucking safer, that's where to start. But we all know the ATA will be 1,000% against that, because that will cost them money.

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I came up with an easy way to teach high school drivers ed students about momentum.

Get two shopping carts and several cases of bottled water. Put all the water in one cart and leave the other one empty. Have each student push each cart in the hallway (during class when they're empty) at a jogging pace and when they cross a piece of tape or something on the floor, they have to stop as quickly as they can.

They do this while the teacher is explaining why heavy trucks need more braking distance. Perhaps cover the loaded cart with poster board and let one of the kids draw a semi truck on it, and do the same with the empty cart but have them draw a small car.

It's easy, safe because the ballast is just water bottles, and probably not hard for a high school to mooch a couple of carts from their local Walmart. And the kids are already familiar with shopping carts and probably already know the heavy cart is harder to push and steer. All they'd need is a teacher to make them realize the physics are the same as with moving vehicles on the road.

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