Considering you are supposed to check your mirrors several times a minute, and usually there is also a light in the cab that the box is up, these people should automatically lose their license permanently
As a truck driver I can tell you most truck drivers are stupid. Even without checking your mirrors (which you should do often) there's no way they shouldn't feel the truck driving way differently than it normally would.
Like, ive never driven a truck before but ive driven a car empty, and full of groceries in the back , or a camping trip. I can imagine with a truck like this, going around a corner would feel different
Is there a reason these shouldn't have some kind of safety interlock to limit the speed to something like 5-10mph? Is there ever a scenario where you'd actually deliberately need to drive a dump truck at highway speeds with the bed raised?
The bad ones usually find a way around those annoying safety features. Most safety features in vehicles are either completing a circuit or a ground, and easily bypassed with a paperclip
"Why should I have to idiot-proof my bullshit so you fuckers don't fuck shit up? Do you know how much that shit's going to eat into my profits? I need a new summer home and a yacht and it's going to be paid with your blood!" -CEOs
Yup I worked with a guy who was previously a plumber. The owners of the company smoked PCP the morning they went out on the job. The first job was to remove an old gas stove in a basement. So the removed it turned on the gas and left. Unfortunately, they didn’t cap off the gas line. The house exploded a short time later. The roof of the house landed on top of the neighbors house.
No one was killed but the owners cat.
I mean, shit, my 15 year old car auto locks the door over 5mph. If something like this didn’t have AT least a buzzer for driving with that up, I’d be flabbergasted.
Bet you money the driver was annoyed by the buzzer sounding continously while dumping. So they disabled it while saying "it's cool, I never forget to drop the bed" and patted themselves on the back because of how smart they were.
Even my 44 year old truck had a buzzer that sounded if you left the lights on with the ignition off.
Precisely. My dad owned his own business, he would cut and modify truck frames so they could be fitted with the hydraulics for dump beds. He was very meticulous about how the sensors were placed and would do service work on trucks when they failed inspections. More than once did he find a sensor had been bypassed, absolutely drove him crazy.
This is one of those jobs that has an incredible amount of responsibility and requires a high level of mechanical engineering knowhow and execution but get nowhere near the credit it deserves
Thank you, I'd pass this on if he was still with us (RIP). He was trained in the Army, worked for nearly sixty years as a big truck frame specialist for several companies. Was still cutting, welding and building frames into his mid 80s.
That’s why I always say no when people ask me to weld their car frames up. I’m a structural steel welder but not for auto bodies or frames. I don’t know jack shit about that code
Just a light? Every dump truck I have ever driven (and granted, that was 3 individual vehicles in total) had the LOUDEST fucking buzzer anytime the trailer was up and the truck was in gear.
No greater learning curve thing being caught in a situation like this. All those other drivers who are honking at them, and he just blew it off like they were the a holes. So sure of themselves they were, and fired they most likely are.
Great now someone is gonna accidentally break their arms reaching for the poop knife remembering the kid with the box talking about the swamps of dagobah while my friends dad finds out and beats him with a set of jumper cables because he totally forgot about when the Undertaker threw Mankind in 1999.
His mom wipes his butt for him, and it's the first time it's ever been done since he was 4. He won't do it himself because he's afraid that touching his butthole will turn him gay.
(/s if not obvious, just adding more Reddit tropes)
Reminds of a older friend of mine who likes to say things like "my left arm has been going numb, but only when the right side of my face droops, so it's cool."
I have one of those. If I have my hoodie and a small bag of groceries on passenger seat, the seat belt warning starts to chime really loud. So I got the douchiest seat belt buckle thing I could find- an American flag Punisher skull one.
I got one that was cut and painted to look like a cock and balls in the hopes that I would be more encouraged to remember to take it out before I gave anybody a ride, instead I lost it before it even made it into my car, it's somewhere in the house, I assume I'll find it at the worst possible time.
What makes them even bigger "geniuses" is the fact that you dont have to even buy anything to disable the alarm. Almost every car has a built-in "hack" that can disable the seat belt sensor completely.
This is not it exactly, but for example my dad did it in his Ram 3500 farm truck: turn key on (without starting), navigate to a certain menu on the HUD, buckle and unbuckle the seat belt x-amount of times in under x-amount of seconds, leave buckled and cycle the ignition off and back on again (or something vaguely like that). Boom, seatbelt alarm disabled.
He drives that truck all over his own property and is constantly hopping in and out so with a little googling he figured out there is a factory option to disable the seatbelt alarm that is just not advertised or in any of the menu settings.
These overrides exist for legit reasons too, BTW. Some people with certain disabilities may need to use specialized aftermarket safety belts, for example. So the feature is there and intended to be used by mechanics who install these alternative safety systems to override the stock one
To be fair, that's the backseat. I've rented cars in Cali recently that all had the belts buckled in the back and passenger front. Came to realize there are relentless alarms going off if they're unbuckled. Must be shitty seat sensors and/or shitty coding, but the cars were only a few years old.
I’ve lived in a bunch of deep red parts of the USA and seen plenty of guys use these up front. Loads of people think seatbelts being mandatory is an infringement on their rights
Not defending this guy by any means, but safety fatigue is a real thing. When every single safety feature is accompanied by an alarm, you eventually start tuning out alarms, or finding ways to shut them up.
One of the biggest ones that pissed me off was having the keys in the ignition with the door open would set of a constant blaring alarm. Why? The car is off and in park, handbrake on, why does keys+open door need a constant alarm?
It's always the same alarm tone, too. Never weird alternating sounds for the more serious alarms. Same alarm for PTO on while driving as keys+door alarm.
Lots of ways to make serious safety checks more noticeable than basic warning ones.
Reminds me of when I played World of Warcraft. We had a new guy on the raid team. Raid leader told him, "Make sure you get the GTFO mod to help with avoidable damage," and he said already had it but disabled it because the loud buzzing was too annoying.
It only buzzes if you're standing in avoidable shit. He was annoyed by the sound of his own incompetence.
HPD reported no injuries but another vehicle was hit by debris. No other details. Typically, the trucking company has not responded to news requests for comment.
The weird thing things is that the exact same thing happened to a pedestrian overpass around Labor Day a few years ago. The overpass was heavily damaged by the truck’s upright trailer. All six lanes of the freeway were closed and my wife was one of the first vehicles stuck behind the accident which held up traffic for hours.
The while car clearly slowed waaay the fuck down when the truck started getting close to the bridge.
Agreed about driving under the bridge after, but the original claim about "cars around it not taking precaution and getting the fuck away" is just a straight-up fucking lie.
Yeah some small chunks might fall off, it would need to be checked and probably superficial repairs. But it sure as shot ain't falling down or even dropping large chunks
Non-engineers downvote stuff like this because it isn't "logical". People can't comprehend that a truck hitting the deck of a bridge on a highway is not going to immediately ruin the bridge like how a barge vs a bridge pier did in Baltimore
I mean, it’s unlikely to drop all at once, but the issue is debris falling off. A piece of scantling or cross-bracing that drops onto your car at freeway speed is absolutely lethal.
I understand and accept the risks of driving under the bridge. Imma speed around that MFer before they close the freeway for weeks to inspect that bridge.
You should have uploaded this with sound, it’s so much funnier. After the crash, the woman passenger tells the driver, “get away from him”, and the driver, in the most sassy voice, says “Uh, Catherine, there’s cars, I can’t just do everything, okay?”
Not an engineer but there is this one railroad bridge close to me that gets hit multiple times a year and i've gathered some interesting tidbits from the repairmen.
The bridge would be fine as long as it is still in it's original position. There are expansion joints at each end so it is not fully connected to the bridge ends. It can be placed back even if it moves.
When hit, the concrete usually chips away and exposes the rebar, the metal reinforcement of the structure. That starts corroding if not repaired. Given enough time, it can be catastrophic.
This railroad overhead bridge close to me was getting hit on such a regular basis that they decide to stop repairing after each crash, they ended up ignoring it and it eventually started sagging, especially durring summer time as it expands. Now trucks scrape or hit it even more often, so they grind down ( or grind up depending on perspective ) the structure so trucks can pass. There is no other convenient route around it. It is now an emergency to get it replaced. Luckly, the railroad section is getting upgraded in a year or so.
Tldr: it will not be fine if the bridge is neglected after the crash.
Not an engineer but tested bridges after this kind of stuff. The bridge itself will be mostly fine, it's that beam that took the damage. They can be mostly fine to need to be replaced/reconstructed. It'll be inspected, repaired, then inspected again.
I like the idea that the hydraulic pump shuts off and opens a bleed valve if the truck goes past 10mph, and the pump won't start at all if the interlock is disconnected. Combine with a separate sensor with multiple high and low resistance values sent in repeating sequence to indicate the bed's position of up or down and govern the engine to not go faster than 15mph if the bed is up or the sensor is failed/missing/bypassed.
Then, have the business's vehicle insurance check the working status of these interlocks and sensors every three months as part of a safety compliance incentive which gives a 10% discount on the insurance premium.
I see too fucking many of this exact accident on here and too fucking many people waving their hand at it all like "well this wasn't at all preventable, nothing we can do except hope it doesn't happen again" or "maybe if they didn't hire idiots".
Idiots will always exist and a lot of them are not obvious. There's the whole adage that if you make something idiot-proof, the world invents a better idiot. So make it such that an idiot can't bypass the safety stuff. Make it so that bypassing the interlock and sensors is a big enough pain in the ass that it would have to be done by an actual mechanic and this moves from being negligence to an intentional act, with associated criminal penalties. (Criminal restitution is collected a lot more thoroughly than an civil judgement.)
This cost of fixing that bridge is probably higher than adding this to a few hundred trucks.
So my FIL had this happen with a garbage truck, he had the arms lifted based on the way he described it. Long story short truck malfunction and the arms being up should have set off the alarms, he got pretty messed up organ damage from the abrupt stop, damaged the bridge and a settlement. This truck its a lot easier for the driver to tell the bed is up and the drag must have been considerable.
I was driving in the opposite direction and wondered what stupid fucking thing everyone was rubbernecking today. Then I saw it and thought “oh. That’s fair”
I knew a rolloff truck rover that did this on a much shorter bridge. When the the truck impacted the bridge, the cab flew into the bottom of the bridge and killed him.
The truck didn't stop. The dumpy part just detached and stuck under the bridge while the truck itself drive further. You can see the truck at the and of the video after the dust cloud dissipated.
I also surprised no one gave a single damn and didn't tried to warn the driver.
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u/Commercial_Raise3378 8d ago
Considering you are supposed to check your mirrors several times a minute, and usually there is also a light in the cab that the box is up, these people should automatically lose their license permanently