Posted on 08/14/2018 12:06:28 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
LAS VEGAS — Two Boise men were killed in a crash Wednesday near Las Vegas, media partner CBS 2 News reports.
The Nevada Highway Patrol told station KSNV a semi-truck driver admitted he fell asleep before a five-vehicle crash on Highway 93.
The crash happened just before 6 a.m., Wednesday at an active construction zone.
According to highway patrol, the semi was filled with sand, so the driver could not stop in time, running over the car in front of him.
The car was ripped in half, split down the middle. The two men inside were pronounced dead at the scene.
Authorities in Nevada identified the men as Robert Jay Barnes, 50, and Christopher Markley, 34. The Boise men died of blunt force injuries.
The wreck is the latest deadly crash involving semi-trucks in a construction zone.
An Ohio truck driver was killed July 3 when two tractor-trailers collided in a construction zone on Interstate 84 east of Twin Falls, creating an explosion.
On June 16 in a construction zone on Interstate 84 near Boise, four people, including a New York truck driver and three Mountain Home Air Force Base airmen, died in a fiery seven-vehicle crash under the Cloverdale overpass.
On Tuesday an Idaho Falls man died when his semi-truck flipped onto its side and burst into flames on Interstate 86 near American Falls, the Idaho State Journal reports, though the report did not say the area was in a construction zone.
PING!
I deal with truck drivers at my job, over the last twelve years I have noted a sharp and dramatic decline in the quality of what is behind the wheel of those things.
Coincides with the introduction of new onerous regulations AND companies deciding to hire unqualified people who they then toss behind the wheel.
This then creates a negative feedback where the drivers who are worth their salt pack it in, which leads to more yo-yos being hired, that then leads to more regulations, which then again leads to more experienced drivers giving up..
I wonder if this driver is among the “low quality” level or if he just had a very bad “one off” day.
Odds are the former.
Hmmm? José, Julio, Jorge, Ernesto, … ???
I have dealt with a lot of commercial drivers.
Because the way they are paid many are very willing to break the hours of service rules.
And run double books.
With E-logs it is getting harder to cheat.
What percentage of long haul loads could be shifted to rail? Hard goods for sure. Raw materials, certainly.
A horrible way to die. Not really worth your cheap joke
I want to know the nationality of the driver
Exactly
I’m with you
I did not notice the names. I did notice that “the driver could not stop in time” to avoid the collision. Actually, he did not stop in time. Had he braked earlier, he could have stopped in time.
Grr....
False. I have it on good authority that all truck accidents are caused by idiot 4-wheelers.
“This then creates a negative feedback where the drivers who are worth their salt pack it in, which leads to more yo-yos being hired, that then leads to more regulations, which then again leads to more experienced drivers giving up..”
Excellent observation.
I watched two great companies go down the tubes by hiring only driving school grads.
One of the companies I was working at.
When I was hired on there was a five year wait list to get hired on.
Your driving record had to be immaculate and your delivery record excellent.
Five years later the elderly owner died and his son took over.
My mileage, therefor my pay, dropped like a stone. I also noticed a lot of new young faces in the trucks.
They were hiring driving school grads at low pay and giving them the miles. All of us experienced drivers making top pay were being starved out. Can’t make a living on 1,200 miles a week.
The day I turned in my truck there were over 20 other older experienced drivers turning in their trucks as well.
Heard similar from other drivers too.
Eventually it will bite the companies.
It already has had a negative impact on the safety of the industry itself and the integrity of the freight.
Had a GPS zombie show up at my truck exit and argue with me about where I worked, he insisted I was stupid and his GPS was right.
He then said he was going to drop his trailer at my truck exit.
The problem is, he’d signed for a load worth almost two million.
And he was seriously going to drop it at a truck exit miles away from the place he was looking for.
Makes me wonder how often that happened.
Sounds like the trucking version of those zombies that step out into traffic while staring at their smartphones.
Pretty much.
They read my “Truck exit only. No trucks.” sign, look at the GPS, and proceed to tell me I don’t know where I work.
Had one go for 45 minutes before he finally got a clue.
I think the dumbest thing I saw was two gals at a truck stop trying to figure out their scale ticket.
They had just finished their training with See What I F###ed up Today and had been thrown in a truck to carry a load to NYC.
They were fretting because they were very overweight.
The look on their faces was so pitiful I asked if I could help.
Dear Lord they were dense.
They didn’t know their steers from their drives from their tandems. Plus they were looking at a weight table for SINGLE axle trucks!
I had them pull to the side and gave them an hour of Hands On instruction.
I made them place their hands on the steers and explained why they were called steers, ditto with the drives and tandems.
After that I went over the scale ticket and showed them how to read it and adjust their tandems. I took a marker and blacked out the single axle column to avoid future confusion.
I spent another hour answering questions they had.
They told me I had taught them more in those two hours than their “trainers” had taught them in three months.
I almost cried.
Anyone that relies on a GPS isn’t all there to begin with. Steering wheel holders, not Drivers.
When I started driving the guy who trained me didn’t let me drive until I could back into a dock with ease.
When I could back into any dock we came to he started letting me drive some. He stayed in the passenger seat and observed and commented as I drove.
While I was learning to bump the dock he had me planning trips from shipper to receiver and learning the log book.
That was about thirty years ago.
Can’t get training like that these days.
“When I started driving the guy who trained me didn’t let me drive until I could back into a dock with ease.”
I actually watched a truck back up 400 foot to then pull the 120 foot down my truck exit, jump out of his rig and then tell me “I don’t know how to back up”.
When asked if he saw the “no trucks” and the “truck exit only” sign he said “yes” but then extolled on how it didn’t apply to him.
One particular NFI driver has gotten her company branded ‘No (effing) Idea’ because we saw her every three days for near three years, always arguing that we were somehow the on ramp to the highway and we were trying to fool her.
And when she called her dispatcher, that moron insisted she was correct and we were lying, that she should just drive through our gate!
You sound like my “regular” experienced drivers who are retiring in droves.
I’m sad to see them go, but glad they’re escaping relatively safely.
I’ve heard lots of “drivers” whining about “darn four wheelers” then seen these same “drivers” turn around and do this little ditty to other drivers, they match speed with the other rig and won’t let them merge in or off the highway.
They also do this “special education hop” inside the rig where they bounce in their seat and slap the steering wheel with their hands while giggling.
When I see that happen, it gets called “Driver on driver hate crime”.
Many of my regulars have seen the same thing.
I’m losing four of them in the next six months as they hang up the spurs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.