You really can’t make judgements like that from videos without knowing anything about the lens on the camera. Dashcams tend to have wide angle lenses which shrink the depth of field tremendously. Foreground and background collapse together.
As for the cargo, given the area, almost certainly oil patch equipment.
And yet the truck driver did not. He could have.
I’m not sure the truck could have stopped. He didn’t necessarily have the stopping distance.
This is a bad section of freeway where numerous things occur; 1 HOV lane exits, 1 HOV lane ends, a major exit is ahead, another major onramp is ahead, a long sweeping curve begins, and a bit further down the road, everyone anticipates slowdown from bridge traffic. It’s a terrible psychological funnel, and if you dared to slow down here, you will be tailgated furiously.
Oil patch, heading to Whistler?
You can, actually. Since you can clearly see the recording car’s windscreen edge and the rear of the truck, you should be able count off two full seconds until the car’s front end passes the same marker (like full Mississippi counts). Watch as the truck’s rear reveals a median line and then count until it is approximately under the front bumper of the car. You have to estimate, but it’s nowhere near two seconds.
This is a good rule of thumb at any speed as the number of car lengths between increase as the speed increases. Much easier than guessing at car lengths on a vanishing point plane (there’s surely a name for that).
Edited for spelling.
Oh, come on. He wasn’t even trying to. If he knew of danger ahead and was - as suggested - trying to get over to ‘safety’ (whatever that was - as it looked like the HOV (??) lane), why had he not already slowed down considerably? There was no evidence of slowing or even trying to stop.
Possibly because he thought he’d get through if the bridge was slightly higher to the left. If he thought at all.
And I typed that before I saw @jmv’s comment …
So why wasn’t he slowing? Yet despite anticipating slowing down, everyone knows…
As if a truck that size would care about being tailgated.
Are you saying nobody would slow to let him in to the HOV lane because they are scared of being tailgated if they slow to let someone in?
Why would anyone think of letting a truck that size into an HOV lane. Why would they even expect that.
I wonder, am I missing something monumentally obvious here, given others’ apparent familiarity with this area?
Wait, is that a thing people do out of spite? I thought they were all just idiots. That’s like the ammosexuals proving how good they are at guns by pointing them at their dicks. Tailgating is one of the absolute stupidest things one can do in a car and it will always be your fault if there’s an accident.
Edited to finish thought.
When I learnt to drive, I was taught to space it by saying “only a fool breaks the two second rule”.
It’s weird; the anticipated slowdown is not visible yet (maybe a mile or so ahead) so people seem to maintain cruising speed as long as they can. It’s that dumb ‘speed up to slow down’ instinct; it’s bad driving. The bridge height might vary by lane, not sure. He certainly slows down once he hits though.
Also, trucks not allowed in HOV lane (unless emergency, I presume, which this might qualify as; IDK, I’m not a trucker).
Uh, you do know how highway signs work, right? They’re headed west on 1/99 and Whistler happens to be the next town in the line. But, like, the entire province of BC is past that. And 99 connects to 1, which connects to, you know, the entire country.
IDK, I still have serious doubts this is oilpatch, but who really cares. Only the customer.
In a fisheye/wide-angle lens, you can’t make any temporal claims like that either. The time a point takes to move through space depends on where it is on the glass. I spent 10 years driving endurance race cars covered in cameras with different lenses for telemetry gathering, and trust me, the resulting footage tells you nothing about where things are relative to each other in space. It’s extremely misleading.
But I know, we all love to judge other peoples’ driving. Have at it.
I remember that. Was my sister’s route to work at about the time he she’d be driving on it…
But you can clearly see when the points are passed by both the truck and the car. It’s less than one second between when the truck and the car pass a certain marker. Even with lens distortion that is way too close.
Years ago I was on the freeway and a truck ahead of me was towing a D6 Caterpillar bulldozer on a flatbed. The roll cage on the Cat hit the underside of a bridge. There was an almighty spray of sparks and the tiedown chains on the Cat must have been loose, because I swear that bigass machine jumped about two feet back on its trailer. Damn near gave me a heart attack.
This is really bad data management. A truck in my state won’t follow a route unless they have accurate data on clearances all the way. And off the main route (side roads, etc) they have escorts who go ahead and do measurements.
Jesus. I hope you found a rest stop to clean yourself soon after. 
