Posted on 06/03/2007 6:47:41 AM PDT by csvset
NEW YORK - A truck driver whose rig was 6 inches too tall for the Lincoln Tunnel drove its entire 1.5-mile length, peeling the trailer’s roof completely and ripping off decorative ceiling tiles.
Flashing signs and officers using a loudspeaker had warned the driver, and it was unclear why he didn’t heed them, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the tunnel.
“He misjudged the height of the tunnel, and once he was inside it he didn’t realize the damage he was doing,” said Roy Guzman, the safety director of the trucker’s employer, U.S.A. Logistics Carriers of McAllen, Texas.
The driver, from Texas, was charged with nine misdemeanor moving violations.
The central tube of three in the tunnel heading into Manhattan was closed for about 90 minutes after the accident early Thursday, but reopened just before the morning rush hour.
On the rare occasions when other trucks have scraped the tunnel’s ceiling, the drivers have stopped, Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said. Police then let air out of the trucks’ tires, so the rigs can be backed out.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Ok, the driver was " from Texas ". I'll bet the guy "No hable Englais " .
I've never understood how truckers can ram into bridges and tunnels. They sell atlases specifically for truckers. They give you height restrictions for major bridges and tunnels. Plus many of said tunnels have systems installed , flashing lights, hugh signs, etc , warning you well in advance of such restrictions.
As noted, this " super trucker " proceeded anyways, ignoring attempts to stop his dumbass.
Ok, the driver was “ from Texas “. I’ll bet the guy “No hable Englais “ .
My first reaction as well
Decorative ceiling tiles in a car tunnell?????????
I get it now, the driver was admiring the ceiling and didn't see the sign that said his trailer was too high.........That's to be expected.
Maybe they think it isn’t actually as low as posted and they have a few inches of wiggle room. Who knows.
He'd been driving for at least four years before the incident, and had a spotless safety record up to that point. Maybe he had never driven through a tunnel before.
misjudged my aching azz!!! there are SIGNS telling you the height limit and he SHOULD KNOW THE HEIGHT OF HIS TRUCK!!! it's arithmetic.
no haabala is my guess too...
Years ago I worked at a cold storage warehouse in Los Angeles, and more than one driver told me about hating to get into certain parts of the Chicago warehouse district....seems some bridges had low clearance, and some rigs would have to do the tire deflating thing to get in and out.
Have you ever driven a rig like that in the Big Apple?
The sign says "Welcome to Manhattan", but the truck is empty. Did the cargo escape on foot?
Great minds and all that. I'll be the first to apologize if his name is Smith.
Low clearance maps are not always accurate. Viaduct at 115th and Cottage Grove is listed as 13'6'' or better on the Low Clearance map for Chicago. The bridge is actually 12'8". Unless you drive here all the time you wouldn't know that.
Sometimes a viaduct is marked 13'6", then they repave the road and forget to remeasure and change the sign. Or an inch of compacted snow at the entrance to the viaduct can turn a 13'6" into a 13'5".
Bottom line though, the driver is responsible for every bridge he attempts to go under. G.O.A.L. Get Out And Look. No matter how many four wheelers you tick off.
But remember drivers, when asked by someone when you get stuck if you are stuck, just say, "Stuck? Heck no, I'm delivering a bridge".
Look closely, the cargo is visible. Just not up to the full inside height.
I see a pallet in there.
Have your eyesight checked Monday. There’s something inside the trailer.
And our president wants to open our borders to Mexican truckers.
Yours is the voice of experience. I drive big rigs in and around the Big Apple. Plenty of surprises, even for the experienced driver.
Heading east on 495, modern highway, all the bridges at 13-6 plus. Suddenly there is a little sign on one of them: “Clearance 12-8”. Nice!
If the shlub’s only been in the country for two months he’s probably still on the metric system, and doesn’t even know what the signs that give the height of the tunnel/underpass/bridge/whatever mean, much less how they apply to the truck he's driving.
The photo may be a comment about Mayor Bloomberg’s Presidential chances.
Not in NYC proper, no, I skirted it a few times in my short driving career.
My favorite is on the west side of Colorado Springs on a railroad trestle. “Clearance 96 FEET” IIRC
HUGE SIGNS...FLASHING YELLOW LIGHTS...POLICE BULL HORN
Then I think back to when the CDL first came into effect. They had to offer VERBAL CDL testing down in Philadelphia. Previous comments well taken...no se habla, engrish.
Every driver thats been on the road in NNJ KNOWS you gotta go in one of the bridges if you are 13’6” (normal height of 95% of box trailers).
I’m just wondering if this was a dry run for something else. The trailer appeared empty. Trailers don’t go INTO Manhattan empty.....any moron over 5 could have heard the trailer peeling back...not to mention the increased load of dragging the ceiling of the tunnel.
Folks, stay the hell away from trucks..times have changed..the white knights are mostly gone. They let ANYONE drive 80K lbs. down the highway now...
Yeah, but some idiots figure that if they cleared the bridge on the way IN, then they’ll have no problem on the way BACK. That would be AFTER they’ve made their deliveries and the trailer is EMPTY, and therefore several inches TALLER.
(Yelling on purpose.)
As in, "Cantu read?"
I do recall one trip where I had to deliver a load to a factory in either New Hampshire or Vermont. They manufactured desktops for school desks. This place was out in the middle of nowhere. Lo and behold, I come across a bridge w/out any height markings. I tried the CB. No one. I walked across the bridge and there on the other side, was a height marker. I had enough clearance.
I mentioned it to the folks at the factory, they said, " Oh, the sign fell off a while back, they just haven't got around to replacing it."
Yes, but the warnings were probably in English. The guy was from the Valley, where English is, at best, the second language. "of McAllen, Texas."
I did time in a truck years back and know personally that in New York city, they falsify the heights on bridges to keep trucks out of areas.
I remember first time I went there. I was stuck in an area that had a one way, they way I came, and three bridges. All said 13’0. I was sittin looking at my map, and all of a sudden another big truck come rollin by and right on past he went under the bridge. I got on the CB and asked him how high he was. He responded with 13’-6”.
I asked about the bridge, and all of a sudden 100 truckers come back at the same time and said, “This is New York Driver, they mark the bridges low so the majority of the Trucks do not go where they cannot get ordinances past”. I could not believe it. So, I fired up and drove my truck under the bridge marked 13’-0. I had several inches to spare...
So this may seem like a stupid thing here, but, I for one can understand that it may very well be another case of the driver not being 100% at fault here...
The air springs on modern highway trucks and trailers are designed to maintain the same height, loaded or empty.
I'll also go out on a limb and guess that he thinks in meters not feet and inches.
Best Below 14'6"
Everything is bigger in Texas.
Dang. That’s tagline material...
Look at the picture again. The looters didn't get it all.
>The trailer appeared empty.<
Look again.
Modern highway trucks, huh? Well then, a couple of trucks that slammed into local bridges around here in th past few years must not have been ‘modern highway trucks’, because that is precisely what happened in both cases.
He may not have ignored the attempts, maybe didn’t see them/hear them, or misunderstood.
Had to detour off a major highway, owing to construction. Nightime, detour just started. Traffic immediately came to a complete standstill. The reason...the detour route had a large tree limb overhanging the roadway...took the roof right off a tractor trailer.
Guess it would help if I read the article...
Well, keep my post just in case you start a thread about this happenning with a bridge in New York... (Slithers away hoping not to be noticed!)
I'm sorry that is complete BS.
He certainly misjudged the height of the tunnel, which in itself is not that uncommon.
But, not to realize he was peeling off the entire roof of the trailer is nonsense.
He didn't care or was too afraid to stop
You know what caught my eye in that picture? The sign with Mayor Bloomingidiots and the other guys names on it. Every time there's an election, a new sign has to be made. It's a jobs program. What a waste of money.
You would have to know the specifics. For instance, single axle box trucks often are equipped with conventional leaf springs, which do lower under load. However, the rig in the photo accompanying this story is most likely riding on air bags. They have control valves to maintain a preset height.
I wrote “highway...” to differentiate between local delivery trucks, and the kind used for long haul work, which is the kind that was involved in the accident.
Additionally, looking at the photo it is possible to see the cargo in the trailer...it wasn’t empty.
Do you drive a big rig in NYC?
Funny line, but it looks like there’s stuff in there.
I was in a vehicle that broke down on I-95 in the Bronx back in the 1980s. We walked to a pay phone (no cell phones back then) to call Triple-A for a tow. By the time we got back to our vehicle, about an hour later, it was up on blocks, the windows were smashed out and the stereo and floor mats were missing.
LOL
Not all trucks use air-ride suspensions.
It’s not that they don’t know English that’s the problem, it’s probably more because Mexico uses the Metric system.
The majority of CDL holders get around fine, but since Boston's a big educational center, you get all the out-of-towners moving in for the school year, and those with their rent-a-trucks make life miserable for everybody, failing to plan out the route.
I heard one story about a daughter of a computer biz giant doing just that.
Do those sat navigation companies take into account clearance restrictions when giving you directions? (snow and repaving excluded, of course)
yeah, I see it now.... I need to remember to put my glasses on...Still this was a moron who cant read and had no regard for anyone else in the tunnel.
Another tunnel, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, connects Norfolk to Hampton. Here's an article about over height vehicles and that tunnel.
Too-tall trucks still snarling tunnels
By TOM HOLDEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 10, 2006
Last updated: 12:09 PM
 |
| After an early-year decline in truck turnarounds at the entrance to the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel’s westbound tube, the numbers have increased in recent months. Mort Fryman/The Virginian-Pilot file photo
|
Higher fines and blunt letters to trucking companies last year initially helped curb the problem of too-tall trucks trying to squeeze into the westbound tube of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel.
In recent months, however, the number of problem trucks has been increasing, leading state highway officials to wonder what it will take to cure one of the biggest reasons for tunnel congestion.
"We're not having great success," Dwayne K. Cook, the Virginia Department of Transportation's regional operations director, said Wednesday.
Tougher penalties for too-tall trucks at the tunnel went into effect July 1, 2005. State Police also increased enforcement efforts, and VDOT and Norfolk International Terminals installed new height-detection equipment.
For a while, officials were pleased with the result. In January, the number of truck turnarounds at the tunnel entrance was 51, down from 129 in the same month last year, according to VDOT.
The improvement has since narrowed. In May, 91 trucks were turned around at the entrance, only three fewer than in the same month the year before. In June, the most recent month for which statistics are available from VDOT, 80 trucks were detoured at the entrance, compared with 95 in the same month of 2005.
A stoppage at the tunnel entrance requires the halting of westbound traffic to allow the truck to exit Interstate 64 onto the bridge-tunnel's South Island. Then eastbound traffic must be stopped to allow the truck to drive off the island and away from the tunnel.
VDOT has calculated that every stopped truck causes at least a 10- minute delay for traffic getting through the tube.
The problem occurs almost exclusively at the older, westbound tube because its height limit, 13 feet 6 inches, is lower - a legacy of its era of construction, the 1950s, when trucks were smaller. Rigs that are too tall for the tube generally detour to the much newer - and taller - Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel.
So far this year, turnarounds at the Hampton Roads tunnel entrance work out to an average of just more than two a day.
That "does not sound that bad," Cook said, "but it's happening Monday through Friday during peak travel times. That's what makes it worse. When you go through rush hours, these are the same ones that cause traffic backups. This is a major problem."
The problem would be even worse if VDOT didn't have a relief valve at 15th View Street in Norfolk. There, at the last exit before the westbound tube, it stops most of the too-tall trucks, aided by height-detection sensors.
The number of trucks turned around at that exit topped last year's numbers in four of the first six months of 2006, according to VDOT.
The rigs travel that far in spite of prominent signs along the interstate declaring the upcoming height limit.
After years of struggling with the problem, VDOT lobbied for last year's state law that raised fines to as much as $500 for truckers who violate the height restrictions.
The law also allowed adding three demerit points to an offending trucker's commercial driver's license. Too many points can lead to the suspension of the license.
VDOT has alerted trucking companies by sending letters to those registering two or more violations.
"Yet we continue to get repeat violators from the same companies," Cook said. "I think we'll need to renew our efforts in working with the Virginia Trucking Association."
Dale Bennett, executive vice president of the association, said the effort to educate truckers through state and national trucking publications has died down.
"We have not done anything lately," he said, "but I'm happy to do anything VDOT asks me to do. All they have to do is call."
Bennett said it's possible that many truckers who were told of the problems when the new law came into effect in 2005 are no longer driving.
"Driver turnover is definitely an issue in the trucking industry," he said, "but I'm at a loss about this. If you can read the signs, then I don't understand how you can get into trouble."
Traffic cameras: Live eyes on the tunnels
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