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Wife of truck driver in bridge collapse says husband has 'impeccable' record

Jerry said:
There was another commercial truck in that lane. But still, why didn't the pilot car radio back that there wasn't sufficient clearance?
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So why didn't he change lanes well in advance of the bridge?

Looks like a complete rookie mistake. Why are you defending such mistakes?
 
Jerry said:
I also wonder if there's a different tailor that could have been used.
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The load is long, would have required a special trailer to decrease the height.
 
Lord of Planar said:
So why didn't he change lanes well in advance of the bridge?
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Another good question. I suspect the driver may have feared making contact with the divider, or the load hanging over the divider and making contact with oncoming traffic in the next lane. Maybe this driver isn't familiar with the area and that's why he hired a local pilot car driver. I don't know how high the bottom of the load itself was from the ground so I cannot hazard a guess.

Lord of Planar said:
Looks like a complete rookie mistake.
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I don't know many 'rookies' in any trade who have 20 years of experience and multiple safety awards. I don't think we can attribute this to inexperience.

Lord of Planar said:
Why are you defending such mistakes?
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Because the best way to prove if something is true, is to try and disprove it.
 
Jerry said:
There was another commercial truck in that lane. But still, why didn't the pilot car radio back that there wasn't sufficient clearance?
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Which makes the pilot car drive just as responsible as the CMV operator.
 
Jerry said:
Another good question. I suspect the driver may have feared making contact with the divider, or the load hanging over the divider and making contact with oncoming traffic in the next lane. Maybe this driver isn't familiar with the area and that's why he hired a local pilot car driver. I don't know how high the bottom of the load itself was from the ground so I cannot hazard a guess.


I don't know many 'rookies' in any trade who have 20 years of experience and multiple safety awards. I don't think we can attribute this to inexperience.


Because the best way to prove if something is true, is to try and disprove it.
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Depends on how many permit loads this driver has hauled. I know drivers that have never pulled anything but dry vans. They don't have a clue about the hazards of hauling a permit load and over-height loads are particularly tricky.

If this was a permitted load, it's ultimately the fault of the state permit office, but you'll never see the state admit to that.

Example: I was pulling a cement pump from Tulsa, OK to Houston, Tx. I was 13-6 wide and 15-1 tall. When I was proceeding on my state assigned permit route, in Sallisaw, OK, there was a bridge over the road with only 13-9 of clearance.
 
We have a veteran trucker with a very good safety record who hires a local pilot car driver to guide him down the rout the State of Washington's DOT recommended when the permit was approved. While in rout, the truck followed the pilot car and proceeded across the bridge since the pilot car did not radio back a clearance problem.

As to the collision: We still haven't ruled out an error on the pilot car's driver, an equipment malfunction on the pilot car, or a structural abnormality in the bridge.

As to the collapse, even if this were 100% driver error, this kind of collision should not have caused a section of the bridge to completely fail. This collision should have resulted in damage fees assessed and the driver's record smeared, but not a structural collaps.
 
shrubnose said:
Well, in this case the section of bridge did come down. Does that tell you anything?

A lot of us would like to think a lot of things, but sometimes reality limits our speculation.




"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." ~ Lewis Carroll
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it tells me we need to fix our bridges before the fall ...
 
apdst said:
It could be a design flaw. Too bad the gubmint engineers are untouchable.
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I knew it had to be the government, and probably only under Obama ... am I right?
 
Lord of Planar said:
They never drove with such loads when the bridge design was conceived before '1955. The opening of the bridge was a known factor in all this, unless the trucking company didn't check...
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O.K., but still, shouldn't it take more than that unless the bridge needed fixing to begin with?
 
apdst said:
Depends on how many permit loads this driver has hauled. I know drivers that have never pulled anything but dry vans. They don't have a clue about the hazards of hauling a permit load and over-height loads are particularly tricky.

If this was a permitted load, it's ultimately the fault of the state permit office, but you'll never see the state admit to that.

Example: I was pulling a cement pump from Tulsa, OK to Houston, Tx. I was 13-6 wide and 15-1 tall. When I was proceeding on my state assigned permit route, in Sallisaw, OK, there was a bridge over the road with only 13-9 of clearance.
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How can an operator find the clearance of every bridge along a rout before actually encountering that bridge? Is there any kind of national bridge registery that could be plugged into, say, google maps?
 
DaveFagan said:
I'm blaming the truck driver. The bridge clearance was 14 feet and 6 inches. The trucker is responsible to make sure his load does not exceed height limits. Not rocket science. Why do you think they put up signs declaring low clearance bridges. Any load in excess of 14 feet 6 inches is an oversize load. Trucker's responsibility. 14' - 6" is also the ataandard clearance in the USA.
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He had a permit. Do you really expect a truck driver to question his superiors?
 
shrubnose said:
Is President Obama responsible when a truck driver in Washington state makes a mistake?
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Probably not, but I do recall giving a newly elected president something near a trillion dollars, part of whiich was going to provide jobs repairing infrastructure.

Since this bridge is now in pieces in a river, I would guess that this bridge is now shovel ready.
 
Jerry said:
Do you happen to have a link to this video? Is it some kind of dash-cam?
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Sorry. It would probably take an hour to find it. But there is a couple of real time videos of the bridge falling.

Someone said he was avoiding an oncoming truck. I assumed they meant a semi. Maybe they were talking about a small pickup truck that you couldn't see from that camera angle.
 
Muhammed said:
Sorry. It would probably take an hour to find it. But there is a couple of real time videos of the bridge falling.
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You mean like this ridiculously poor quality video?


 
Jerry said:
That's unfortunate, I was hoping the truck had a dash-cam running and that it was on the internet by now.
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Yeah, that would be cool to see. I'd love to see a high quality video of how he got to the other side without going in the drink.
 
Jerry said:
Do we know that the truck operator is the one who made a mistake?
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We know that he was driving the truck, and we know that the truck hit the bridge.

What do you think?

Kind of looks like he's guilty, but I'll let the court decide.
 
jimbo said:
Probably not, but I do recall giving a newly elected president something near a trillion dollars, part of whiich was going to provide jobs repairing infrastructure.

Since this bridge is now in pieces in a river, I would guess that this bridge is now shovel ready.
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Might be a good place to start the nation-wide infrastructure repair/renewal project, eh?

I'm down with that idea.




"If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." ~ Lewis Carroll
 
Muhammed said:
Yeah, that would be cool to see. I'd love to see a high quality video of how he got to the other side without going in the drink.
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This is the only thing that I could find:

It's not great video, but you'll see the truck pass and the section of bridge collapse. Shows it several times without the AP logo.
 
Northern Light said:
Wife of truck driver in bridge collapse says husband has 'impeccable' record | CTV News



I'm glad that everyone got out okay. I understand that a truck carrying steel could cause a bridge collapse, but this accident points to the issue of aging infrastructure. Our Federal and State governments are so focused on war or cutting back public services that we are now seeing the results.

Are we prepared to have more bridges collapse in the coming decade in exchange for bloated Federal projects, corporate handouts, and endless wars?
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Um, no.

Because we lavish absurd amounts of the funds which the Government confiscates from the Productive Strata upon the parasitic classes, their is less available for public infrastructure. No, I assure you more money for Head Start, Food Stamps, Obama care or other boondoggles will not repair any highways nor bridges.
 
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shrubnose said:
We know that he was driving the truck, and we know that the truck hit the bridge.
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But we do not know if it was his fault. We know that final responsibility falls to the company, not necessarily the driver.

shrubnose said:
What do you think?
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I think there's no good reason to assume the truck operator did anything wrong yet. My money is on the pilot car dropping the ball.

shrubnose said:
Kind of looks like he's guilty, but I'll let the court decide.
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...implying you have the power to stop a court should you so desire....
 
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