So, you’re sailing up a mountain pass and you see a sign: Runaway Ramp. As the highway descends from the mountains, the slope itself appears on the horizon. It is an exit on the right hand side that leads to a short gravel road up a steep bank. you wonder to yourself, What would happen if I accidentally drove into a runaway truck ramp? Here’s the scoop: Your car or so will stall—quickly—and may end up hopelessly stuck to its axles. What’s interesting is how an unbridled truck ramp will force your vehicle from highway speeds to a standstill.
Why does America have runaway truck ramps?
Rampant truck ramps are for stopping trucks that can’t stop themselves. Truck drivers only use a ramp once their hydraulics fail, and they’re hurtling towards a certain collision.
Those that are not heavily loaded and have partial brakes may be able to stop themselves on this first section.
If you head out onto a runaway truck ramp, you might be lucky enough to come across one that has a paved section, seal your brakes, and stop before your vehicle is damaged. Or maybe not.
Many runaway truck ramps contain a section of small scale gravel. This next section is designed to slow down—and possibly stop—a heavily loaded truck. This is because gravel provides more resistance to rolling than pavement. It’s a good measure so truck wheels sink in and stop.
So if you’re going up a fast truck slope and encounter a section of fine gravel, you’ll likely sink into your fenders and seriously damage the underside of your vehicle before you come to a stop. If you keep rolling in some way, you may end up in a sand trap.
Some wild truck ramps end in what is called a sand trap. This is just a big deep sand pit. They are designed so that the trucks sink deep into their surface and come to a stop. If you hit a sand trap in your car, you are likely to get caught in it and get stuck more than a piece of gravel. Of course, you will need to wait for a withdrawal.
Many of the wild truck ramps even end in a large network of cables. This is designed to stop a moving truck once and for all. If you hit this grille, you will likely damage the front of your vehicle. If you’re moving fast enough in some way, a crash can cause the air bags to deploy.
Are runaway truck ramps harmful to trucks?
Yes, ramps of runaway trucks usually damage the underside of runaway trucks. This is one of the reasons truck drivers only use them to avoid an even worse crash.
For a technical paper, a team ran a loaded dump truck up a runaway truck ramp in Pennsylvania. They were only moving 35 miles an hour so they found that the only damage was the lower parts of the engine and the brake air tanks – according to .
At higher speeds, or in a less powerful car, the damage would have been much worse. Finally, some towing companies will charge $2,500 to $4,000 to pull a severely damaged truck off an unruly truck ramp. So it would be wise to avoid wild truck ramps unless your brakes fail and you need to stop your vehicle.
Next, find out what some cities offer truckers, or watch what happens when a semi-truck uses a speedy ramp in the video below:
Check out a whole new kind of wild truck ramp technology in this latest video:
