Golden Jubilee
Posts: 5177
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:28 pm
Location: Lyman, IA
I 70 truck crash
Just read that the driver is facing 40 counts. Most will likely not stick, but at least 4 for homicide should. No where in any of the reporting do I see the name of the company he drove for. They should be named and held responsible for their part in it. I’m sure the Tort lawyers will go after them, but some criminal culpability should lie at the company level as well.
At 23 years old, by law, the driver can have no more than 2 years OTR experience. It may have been his first crossing on I 70. Not making excuses, just pointing out facts. Big trucking companies want to relax rules on training, and push recruits through as fast as possible, then put them out with a “trainer” who may have no more experience than the driver in this case.
Like auto’s, trucks have become more “self driving”, with auto or automated transmissions and retarders, auto adjusting brakes etc. Very few young drivers would know how to adjust a manual slack adjuster, and most companies wouldn’t want them to try. If you don’t know how to maintain brakes, how the heck are you going to know how to assess if something isn’t right?
All this removes driver awareness from the risks the job entails. When I started, the rule was descend the grade in the gear you went up, later as truck became more powerful and aerodynamic, that wasn’t good enough, often you need to descend slower than you climbed.
Descending grades can be tricky, especially if you don’t know the road. If you start down too fast, there is a very small window to correct your error. The faster you start the less chance that you can correct it. It is why there are signs with the recommended safe speed for trucks. I suspect this driver passed the point of no return long before he was aware of it.
A real experienced driver will attempt to set his speed at the top of a grade, such that the engine and (if equipped) retarder will hold the trucks speed all the way to the bottom without application of the service brakes. Not only is this safe, it cuts on maintaince cost, requiring few brake replacements. It leaves the service brakes cool and ready should there be a need to stop before the bottom.
Reports suggest he was already in trouble way before the truck escape ramp. Even if there were no other vehicles on the road, if he past that ramp at speed, it is unlikely that truck and trailer could have handled the curves further down. It is hard to know what a “brain sees” in a panic, perhaps he didn’t see the escape ramp, perhaps he didn’t trust it. Both rookie mistakes, which cost lives. I have read that no truck, that has entered an escape ramp square and stayed in the ramp, has resulted in a fatality, even at speeds close to 100 mph. I will also say, in no safety meeting at any trucking company I have been associated with, were we told “don’t risk it, if you have any question at all, take the escape ramp”. It was never discussed.
In this case, the back-up occurred and one of the worse places, right at the end of the grade, still everyone else managed to get stopped.
The age of truck drivers is a reverse bell curve, with the vast majority over 50 and the next big group under 30. As experience “age out” of the job, who will train the new hire’s? We have the inexperienced training the no experianced. Not a good system.