Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you saying that “catastophic parts-shedding” could maybe have been predicted by a pre-trip inspection, and so the accident wouldn’t have happened danceswithcats? That’s what I understand you to be saying at least, that the driver may bear some responsibility if the failures could have been detected by looking the brakes over beforehand, and refusing to operate the vehicle?
Not excusing any poor maintenance but…
The loads on many braking parts in even a passenger car are almost beyond imagination, in a heavy truck they are orders of magnitude higher. The one closeup shot looked to me like part of a brake drum. Even with the heavier duty compnents a catastrophic failure of one major component of one brake could shatter the brake drum and leave it and other parts of the brake assembly on that wheel scattered over a wide area. That in itself should not prevent the whole truck from stopping in a reasonable distance. I would wonder just how much CDL experience this driver had before his one week with this company. If this was a brand new driver his own poor decisions could have contributed immensely to the quantity of the destruction involved.
In my EMT days I had an ambulance lose a power steering pulley as I was starting a right turn rolling through a green light. I couldn’t turn the and since I was accellerating out of the turn barely managed to stop inches from the side of a car waiting to make a left turn towards me when his turn came. Not something a morning pre-trip would catch, especially 9 hours and 7 calls into a 24 hour shift, driven by a 19 year old out to save the world singlehandedly.
Of course this should settle that the driver shares the blame
Link
Click the link to get a better idea of what is said. Its a shame that it happened and I am sure the company shares a lot of the blame but the driver is not without blame.
No, it doesn’t settle that. Not at all.
In order for the driver to share the blame, it would have to be shown that the malfunction would have been detectable via a pre-trip inspection. Until that’s been shown, you can’t blame the driver.
Short of someone sabotaging his truck the inspection he is required to do should of caught the problem, in the vast majority of cases.
Sorry he shares the blame. And if he doesn’t share the blame neither does the company, it would be a manufactured part problem non-detectable.
That doesn’t even make sense. You’re conflating two levels of inspections.
The driver is required to do a pre trip; the carrier (the trucking company; the industry term for them is “carrier”) is required to have a preventive maintenance program. The level of work and inspection that goes into a truck, and its brake assembly, in the shop is a hell of a lot greater than a pre-trip. Many brake problems that would NOT be detectable on a pre-trip inspection could be picked up by maintenance. So it is quite possible that the problem that caused this accident was not apparent in a pre trip, but could have been avoided with a proper program of maintenance.
Maybe it was partially the driver’s fault and maybe it wasn’t. Until you know what SPECIFIC fault caused brake failure, you don’t know.
What am I supposed to think when, as happened locally, the local truckers used their radios to warn their fellow truckers of the location of the mobile safety inspection station, and had one trucker shadowing the safety inspection team, reporting their current location.
Many of the trucks that were inspected were grossly overloaded and had bad brakes and tires.
If so, I apologize for any inferrance that I was calling out Dances for ridicule.
The problem is with that location there isn’t any reasonable stopping distance. It’s a long (1/2 to 1 mile) semi-steep curving grade, where it’s quite easy to hit 60-plus even though that’s not safe. It only goes flat at best 150 yards from the stoplight.
We probably won’t know for a couple of months, but I doubt the newness of the driver from a CDL perspective contributed to it. However, there’s been some small speculation that he wasn’t all that familiar with the road itself. (Then again, maybe that is from a CDL perspective - I’m sure they’re taught to drive carefully on unknown roads).
It also seems pretty apparent (from the somewhat meager evidence) that the driver knew the shit had hit the fan, but he did what he could to avoid tragedy. It just didn’t work. From my earlier post:
Anyway - I suppose from some standpoint I understand why some of you say the driver shares the blame - but by God does that seem unfair compared to a) the egregiousness of the company itself, and b) how the driver died.
That is exactly what I’m saying. It is one thing if I’m the only driver of a vehicle-in that scenario I’ll do my lights and fluids daily, and get down and dirty every other day or weekly, depending on whether I’ve been doing flatlands or the hill course. If it’s a pool vehicle, a rental, or otherwise, I take my time every day, particularly on brakes.
After 30+ years as a firefighter and former EMT/paramedic, I’ve seen the other side of deferred maintenance and shallow pre-trips. Many of the NTSB reports that I’ve read over the years involving large trucks/buses indicate brake adjustment out of range as being directly causal, among other defects which would have been identified, had a full pre-trip been performed, and had the operator taken a stand for safety.
It takes conviction to walk into the super or traffic manager’s office and tell him or her, “I’m not gonna drive it, because it’s not safe.” Been there. Done that.
No offense taken paperbackwriter.
Your link is all hosed up, the items you list are on page 9, but on page 14 where it talks about the walk around the it tells the driver to check the condition of the brake hoses and drums. Furthermore unless truck drum brakes are way way different then what was used on a car (Other than size of course) there is no way in hell for anybody to inspect the lining condition without pulling a brake drum. This is no simple matter, and should not be expected in a daily walk around.
So unless it comes out that there was visible signs of a problem that a driver could reasonably be expected to find, I am not going to yell at the driver too much. Particularly since he has already paid a pretty heavy price already.
Dances I call bullshit. A pre-trip cannot find all the reasons that a truck might start shedding parts. Don’t forget the driver had only worked there for one week, so he was probably ignorant of the past history of the rig he was assigned that day.
Here is one example what I am talking about. The pre-trip tells the driver to inspect the lug nuts for tightness. He does this, and finds them all tight. The backstory (what he does not know) is that this rig had the lugs loosen up a while back, and a several of them broke. The shop only replaced the broken ones. The problem is that the breaking of lug studs overstress the remaining and weakens the hell out of them. There is no way in hell that on a pre-trip the driver could be expected to spot visually the overstressed, and about to break studs. If enough of the studs break, guess what fall off the truck?
Or perhaps a wheel bearing is failing. If the wheel bearing fails you can also loose a wheel. Unless you are a way better mechanic than I am you are not going to find a failing wheel bearing by looking at it as you walk by.
I do agree that a properly maintained vehicle does not go around shedding parts. The catch here is that is obvious that the truck in question was not properly maintained.
I don’t know, IF the problems with the brakes could have been detected by a pre-trip inspection, than I’d say the driver paid for his own lack of conviction very heavily. That doesn’t absolve him of his part in the accident though. Thing is, it’s not known yet how it happened, the driver might not have been able to spot the problems. I agree that the owner of the company should have heavy penalties levied, including prison time.
Oh, this almost certainly won’t happen. OSHA is one of the most neutered government organizations around; they’ll bend over backwards to avoid filing criminal charges against a company and the largest fine they can levy is, for a large business, trifling.
Expect to see the owner of the company pay a fine, maybe get hit with some civil suits, and come out of it with his life and business intact. Unlike the people he killed.
I would think that the prosecutor would have a case, especially considering that there is evidence that he ignored safety by putting undriveable vehicles on the road frequently. Why would OSHA be the only one that could pursue him? I’d hope that there are statutes in place that the DA could put into play? 
Please, explain why it would be only OSHA if that is the case?
I disagree. This case has the right amount of horror to bring the ole justice hammer down hard. What makes it even more likely is that this guy is unusually shifty (one company gets shut down for shoddy equipment so he starts another with same equipment).
Nope. This guy is going to pay. Admittedly not as hard as the driver did, but hard nonetheless.
I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I’d be surprised if the owner of the company is brought to justice and gets convicted of murder or some other really serious felony.
The NY Times did a great series on OSHA a year or two ago; the first article followed a somewhat similiar case: A company whose owner had repeatedly disregarded safety regulations and had been repeatedly fine lost a worker in a completely preventable trenching accident. Their punishment? A $54,000 fine and they didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing.
The difference in this case being, not just an employee of the company was affected, this owner’s (willful, repeated) disregard of safety regulations brought about the deaths of public citizens who weren’t employed by him, damaged the roadway, etc.
I think it’s pretty sad that that makes a difference.
I agree. 
Though, it does make me a little less disgusted to hold out hope that the cretin who runs the company will pay for his actions with hard prison time.
He’ll never see the inside of a prison. However, he will be civilly sued into his constituent atoms.