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You are held responsible for the maintenance of every bridge you cross? Every road you drive on? So if you have a permit to drive over a certain road with an overweight road, but because that road wasn't properly maintained by the city/county, your oversize load causes the road to give way and wash out....you think that's your fault?My point, is that the driver is responsible. In my situation, my boss is going to want me to haul an unlawful oversize load. I can't get on the road, something go wrong, then say my boss made me do it. Why? Becsuse the driver is responsible. Soon as I say yes, I assume 100% of the tesponsibility for anything that goes wrong.
I've been looking at a couple trucker forums and their general opinion is that the pilot car was to close and either didn't have time to radio back a clearance problem, or there was a problem with the poll which didn't signal a clearance problem at all.
My point, is that the driver is responsible. In my situation, my boss is going to want me to haul an unlawful oversize load. I can't get on the road, something go wrong, then say my boss made me do it. Why? Becsuse the driver is responsible. Soon as I say yes, I assume 100% of the tesponsibility for anything that goes wrong.
I agree with you there.If the pilot car didn't have time to alert the driver, the driver was following to close.
If the permit issuer told him "You must be in this lane to cross" and he wasnt then its pretty much 100% the drivers fault. If the permit issuer was lazy and assumed the driver would know, never telling him then it would be the permit issuers fault.I agree with you there.
I fully understand and agree with the driver having final authority and therefore final responsibility with what happens to his load. Everything up to and including making contact with the bridge, the buck stops with the driver.
What I do not fault the driver for is the bridge collapsing after being struck, because of the facts of this specific situation. It would be one thing if we had a driver with a questionable safety record who took a few short cuts and struck a perfectly sound bridge. But that's not what happened. We have a driver with an "impeccable" record who took every precaution but still struck an old worn out rusted over bridge.
The measure of the driver's fault is the damage to his load, the damage of the piece of the bridge he struck, and the resulting insurance rate increases and blemish on his record.
The driver is not at fault for the collapse because if the bridge had been properly maintained it would not have collapsed.
Wow that's exactly how it works in the military, too. PVT Snuffy is randomly selected to be the fall guy for the Sergeant should anything go wrong. A whipping boy.I know in the refinery ive seen safety watches take the burn when someone else was definately responsable. They pull a random guy out of the crowd and say, "Tag you are safety watch!" Then a guy using a scissor lift or manbasket proceedes to do whatever the hell he wants with it and never listen to the safety. Instead of shutting the job down and creating a HUGE stink and wasting man hours for maybe hundreds of people they just go with it. Operator then recklessly pops a high pressure steam pipe (lucky its not boiling hot crude or something) and points his finger at the safety guy. Safety guy tells the truth and says "He wouldnt listen to me and was doing whatever he wanted" and the corporate slavedogs who make decisions locally use that as the final and only important cause.
Thats just a personal story of my roommate who was in the same industry as me though and 1 of the reasons why he got fired from 1 company we both worked for.
They also love to roll **** downhill to preserve company resource. AKA if a freshly hired assistant gets fired for doing a crappy safety job then the higher paid technician who pulls the company much, much more money then the company loses less.
At least the story makes more sense going southbound.
Dude could have always just stopped though if it was a right of way problem. When cars go into a 1 car each way tunnel they dont rush in at the last second. You stop traffic if you have to and never pass or even think about right of way issues. 1 lane dedicated to this guy is essentially a tunnel. He should have been in the proper lane a mile ahead of time at least.
I don't see how any part of the permit or permitting process could ever place responsibility of bridge maintenance on the driver.If the permit issuer told him "You must be in this lane to cross" and he wasnt then its pretty much 100% the drivers fault. If the permit issuer was lazy and assumed the driver would know, never telling him then it would be the permit issuers fault.
95% of my experiences with permit issuers is you put the paper in their face and say "Im be doing *this*" and they pretend to scan down the whole thing and look for any personal messages then sign it and give you an incredulous look if you dont get out of their face so they can go back to playing facebook games.
It wasnt maintenance it was faulty design.I don't see how any part of the permit or permitting process could ever place responsibility of bridge maintenance on the driver.
Damit Jim I'm a truck driver not a Structural Engineer!
That kinda makes me want to become a Civil Engineer, though. If anything ever goes wrong and I totally drop the ball on maintaining any structure for years and years, I can just blame a trucker.
It wasnt maintenance it was faulty design.
Oh well that's certainly the trucker's fault. He should have known back in the 50s that there was a problem and forced them to make a change, even if he was still in diapers and only spoke 3 words that's no excuse!
I fault the driver for striking the tunnel.If you know you have to drive into a 1 lane tunnel youd get into that lane plenty well in time wouldnt you?
I never said others didn't contribute to the problem. If the lead car made a mistake, it is still the truck driver responsibility in the end. That's why I asked questions like "if the lead car drives off a cliff, is the truck suppose to follow?"Not saying you're wrong, but I didn't see that part....I thought it was near the end of the span also...You could be right though...Still doesn't make you correct that it is 100% the drivers fault.
Really?A trucker cannot be responsible for the condition of a bridge, that it falls when struck.
The bridge condition was good. It's poor ratings were because of design.Did the permit stipulate the condition of the bridge?
Really. Just where is you link saying it wasn't maintained. That isn't what a "sufficiency rating" is. I don't recall seeing anything that said it was poorly maintained.That's just not true. The bridge fell because it wasn't maintained. Trucks hit bridges all the time, they don't fall.
Sufficiency Rating
The bridge sufficiency is a method of evaluating highway bridge data by calculating four separate factors to obtain a numeric value which is indicative of bridge sufficiency to remain in service. The result of this method is a percentage in which 100 percent would represent a entirely sufficient bridge and zero percent would represent an entirely insufficient or deficient bridge.
Sufficiency Rating is essentially an overall rating of a bridge's fitness for the duty that it performs based on factors derived from over 20 NBI data fields, including fields that describe its Structural Evaluation, Functional Obsolescence, and its essentiality to the public. A low Sufficiency Rating may be due to structural defects, narrow lanes, low vertical clearance, or any of many possible issues.
WTF...I've been looking at a couple trucker forums and their general opinion is that the pilot car was to close and either didn't have time to radio back a clearance problem, or there was a problem with the poll which didn't signal a clearance problem at all.
Almost 60 years old is obsolete. Not faulty.It wasnt maintenance it was faulty design.
WTF...
Would you, as a driver, pretend you didn't know the low point of this bridge was 12' 6" while the corner of your load is 15' 9"?
Well...Have you not ever heard of a stupid truck driver.
Really?I fault the driver for striking the tunnel.
I do not fault the driver when the tunnel then collapses. I fault the city for not properly maintaining the tunnel.
A “fracture critical” bridge is defined by the FHWA as a steel member in tension, or with a tension element, whose failure would probably cause a portion of or the entire bridge to collapse.
Fracture critical bridges, of which there are a total of about 18,000 throughout the U.S., lack redundancy, which means that in the event of a steel member’s failure there is no path for the transfer of the weight being supported by that member to hold up the bridge. Therefore, failure occurs quickly, as reflected in the video that captured the collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minnesota.
WOW! They said it would take over a year. I hope they plan on replacing each section of it over time and adding the structure bracing to the sides or bottom of it instead of overhead.
You are held responsible for the maintenance of every bridge you cross? Every road you drive on? So if you have a permit to drive over a certain road with an overweight road, but because that road wasn't properly maintained by the city/county, your oversize load causes the road to give way and wash out....you think that's your fault?
I'm beginning to truly understand why truckers are so ruff around the edges.
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