User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow: Trucks World News: TRUCKS ACCIDENT * USA: “Once you hear the freight break loose and start sliding, there’s absolutely nothing you can do”
Google
 
Loading

Mar 31, 2015

TRUCKS ACCIDENT * USA: “Once you hear the freight break loose and start sliding, there’s absolutely nothing you can do”

* Atlanta: Truck rollovers: Deadly hot spot of twisting highways

 -- It was almost midnight when Walter Price eased his 18-wheeler into the right lane on Interstate 75 near Atlanta. As he began to bank onto the exit ramp he’d been taking for the past 10 years, Price had no idea he was entering America’s most dangerous hot zone for truck drivers... As Price rounded the curve onto Exit 238-B that cold night in February 2012, a small black car darted in front of him on an otherwise deserted highway. The car’s driver slammed on the brakes to negotiate the exit’s sharp curve. Price had to veer left and hit his brakes to avoid a collision. But the curve was too sharp and Price’s 36-ton rig carrying car parts began to roll... Price was lucky. He survived his rollover; many others do not. Each year, hundreds of truck drivers die across the country on congested roadways and antiquated exit ramps like the one where Price crashed, as a crumbling interstate highway system, designed in the mid-1950s, bears the ever greater burden of a booming trucking industry... While the Prices felt lucky to survive their rollover, they were devastated financially. Price had to replace his destroyed truck and it took four weeks to get back on the road. Even with insurance, the total cost to him of a new truck and a month of lost wages: $100,000... The driver of the car who caused it all faced no consequences... “He just kept on driving, like they always do,” Price said. “They create accidents and they keep on driving like nothing happened. It’s brutal out here” ... Americans were reminded how lethal a rolling 18-wheeler can be for car passengers. Far less noticed are the rollovers that are especially deadly for truck drivers... Though they accounted for just 3.3 percent of all large-truck crashes, rollovers were responsible for more than half of the deaths to drivers and their occupants in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available. That’s 300 truck occupant deaths and 3,000 injuries every year. And among the 2.6 million workers in the U.S. who drive trucks that weigh more than 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms), crashes are the leading cause of on-the-job death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention... Overworked, distracted and sleepy drivers are causes of rollovers. But so too are outdated highway engineering and growing gridlock as trucking puts ever greater strain on the nation’s aging roadways. Truck tonnage hauled jumped to an all-time high in January, the American Trucking Associations reported. Truck freight may rise 5.3 percent this year from 4 percent in 2014, according to FTR Associates data compiled by Bloomberg, as job growth spurs U.S. consumer spending... The almost 10 billion tons of freight carried annually is taking such a toll on the nation’s highways that politicians of all stripes are angling to raise the money needed to fix them... The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month sent a proposed rule to the White House for review that would mandate electronic stability control to take over braking on big trucks, like the technology now required on sport utility vehicles, pickups and cars. While industry opposition has held up the regulation, NHTSA says it could save 60 lives a year and prevent 2,329 crashes... In the U.S., crash prevention technology like stability control, along with greater seat-belt use, has helped to reduce overall highway deaths by 21 percent since 2003, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Truck occupant deaths, in part due to lax seat-belt use, have fallen less—16 percent since 2003... What hasn’t changed is the percentage of truckers who die in rollovers. It was 51 percent in 2003 and 52 percent in 2012, according to federal data analyzed by Arlington, Virginia-based IIHS... 
(Photographer: Laura Oda/Oakland Tribune/Zuma Press - Atlanta is the fatal center of the U.S. truck rollover syndrome, but the problem is nationwide. Above, a rollover near San Francisco backs up highway traffic at rush hour for nearly 10 miles)  -- Atlanta, GA ,USA   - Bloomberg, by Keith Naughton - March 30, 2015

Labels:

posted by Unknown @ 7:54 AM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home