How to Stay Safe on the Shoulder After a Breakdown

The mechanical failure is almost never what hurts you. Traffic is. Every year drivers and technicians are killed standing beside disabled trucks, struck by a vehicle that drifted six feet to the right at 70 miles an hour. The truck was fine. The person next to it was not.

This part of a breakdown has a right answer. Read it before you need it, because the decisions come fast and you will make them with your heart going.

The first sixty seconds

Hazard flashers go on the moment you know you are stopping. Federal rules require them immediately when you stop on the traveled portion or the shoulder of a highway, and they stay on until your warning devices are out.

Get the truck as far right as it will go. Past the rumble strip, wheels clear of the fog line, straight with the road, not angled into the lane. If you can still limp, an exit ramp or a rest area beats a shoulder every time. Set the parking brakes, chock on a grade, and do not park a hot DPF over dry grass.

Get out on the passenger side

The driver's door opens directly into a live lane. Step down out of it and you are blind — the door blocks your view of what is coming, and your feet land on the strip of pavement a drifting vehicle occupies. Drivers are killed doing this on shoulders that felt safe.

Slide across and go out the passenger side. Put the mass of the truck between you and traffic. It costs four seconds and it is the highest-value habit in this article.

Triangles: where they go and why

You are required to carry three bidirectional reflective triangles, or the equivalent in fusees or flares, and warning devices have to be out within ten minutes of stopping. Where they go depends on the road.

1. 1On a divided highway or one-way road, which covers I-10 and most of what you run, all three go toward approaching traffic behind the truck: one about 10 feet back on the traffic side, one at about 100 feet, and one at about 200 feet.
2. 2On a two-lane, two-way road, traffic comes from both directions. One goes about 10 feet from the truck on the traffic side, one about 100 feet behind it, and one about 100 feet in front of it, each in the center of the lane or shoulder you are occupying.
3. 3If you are stopped within 500 feet of a hill crest or a curve that blocks the view of approaching drivers, move the rearmost device back — 100 to 500 feet from the truck, toward that obstruction — so a driver coming over the rise gets warning instead of a surprise.
4. 4Flame-producing devices are off the table for tank vehicles hauling flammables loaded or empty, for explosives, and for trucks running on compressed gas. Use the triangles.

The distances are not bureaucracy. At 70 miles an hour a vehicle covers about 100 feet per second. A triangle 200 feet back buys an approaching driver roughly two seconds to see you, register it, and move over. Placing them short does not just fail an inspection. It fails you.

The walk out and back is when people get hit

• Face traffic. Walk toward oncoming vehicles so you can see what is coming.
• Carry the triangles out in front of you, reflective side out, so drivers see you coming.
• Stay off the traveled lane. Walk the far edge of the shoulder, the grass, or behind the guardrail.
• Never walk across live lanes. If a device belongs somewhere you cannot safely reach on foot, do not go get it.
• Set them and get off. Do not linger out there squaring things up or making a phone call.

Where to stand, and where people die

Once your devices are out, you have exactly one job: not be on the shoulder.

Never stand in front of your rig. It feels natural — the engine is there, and it is out of the wind — and it is the place that kills. When a drowsy or distracted driver drifts onto the shoulder, they hit the rear of your truck and drive it forward. Anything between the front of your truck and a guardrail or a sign post gets crushed. The front of a stopped rig is a strike zone.

Never stand between the truck and traffic. Never stand in the gap between tractor and trailer. Never sit on the driver's-side fuel tank steps. Get away from the roadway entirely — behind the guardrail, up the embankment, away from the truck, because the truck is what a stray vehicle hits.

If there is nowhere to go — a narrow shoulder, a jersey barrier, a bridge deck — get back in the cab and put your seatbelt on. The cab is a structure built to take a hit. A person standing on the fog line is not. Waiting belted in the seat is not cowardice, it is the correct call.

If the flat tire or the blown air line is on the driver's side of the rig, that is not a roadside repair, that is a phone call. Working on the traffic side of a truck on a live shoulder is how drivers and technicians get killed.

Be visible, or be invisible

A dark jacket on a night shoulder is a coin flip. Wear a high-visibility vest any time you are outside the truck near a roadway — Class 2 at minimum, Class 3 for night or high-speed roads. Federal rules require high-visibility apparel for anyone working in the right-of-way of a federal-aid highway, and that includes you when you are setting triangles.

The part people miss: fluorescent color does nothing after dark. What saves you at night is the retroreflective striping, which throws headlight beams straight back at the driver. Keep the vest in the door pocket, not the sleeper — a vest you have to dig for is a vest you will not wear. Carry a headlamp. You need your hands.

Keep your four-ways and markers on so you are seen. At night, if your headlights are aimed across the shoulder toward approaching traffic, kill them. Lights pointed at oncoming drivers cause target fixation, and people steer toward what they stare at.

Move-over laws help. They do not protect you.

Florida's move-over law now covers disabled vehicles, not just emergency responders. Drivers approaching a stopped vehicle with hazard lights or warning devices out must move over a lane when they safely can, or slow to 20 miles per hour below the posted limit. That law is worth having. Do not put your body where it has to work — the drivers most likely to hit you are the ones not looking at you in the first place.

Once you are safe and visible, get help rolling. Know your highway, mile marker, and direction of travel before you dial. Broken down along I-10 or around Milton, Pace, Pensacola, Navarre, or Crestview, call Duckett Roadside Repair at (850) 495-0366. Dispatch is answered 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Get your triangles out, get off the shoulder, and let James come to you.