People think of the Pacific Northwest as a rain-drenched forest. But driving the high-desert climate of eastern Oregon and Washington is a very different experience. This is I-84. It is the main route through Eastern Oregon, and into Idaho—especially for semi-trucks. On a November afternoon in Eastern Oregon, meteorologists predicted wind gusts at 55-60 mph. The wind kicked up dust [...]
Earlier this month, a Texas jury issued an 89.6 million dollar verdict against Werner Enterprises, a Nebraska-based trucking company. The case involved a 2014 crash that killed a 7-year-old, paralyzed a 12-year-old girl, and resulted in a traumatic brain injury for a teenager. The verdict has been controversial because of the unusual facts of the [...]
No one was injured. No other vehicles were involved. But 40,000 pounds of feathers were dumped onto I-5 in Federal Way around 3 a.m. when semi-truck driver caused a roll-over crash. https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/999268630029156353 The truck driver told a local reporter that he had fallen asleep. "I drank coffee and took one of those pills that had [...]
This week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released their Large Truck and Bus Crash Facts for 2016. The annual report is compiled from state-collected data and analyzed by FMCSA. There are many interesting facts in this year's report, but one particular fact stands out to me. More than 60 percent of all fatal truck crashes happened [...]
In April 2018, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration declared two commercial motor vehicle operations to be "imminent hazards" While that number is not unusual—FMCSA often shutters multiple companies in a month— these two are particularly interesting because they were both so blatantly, criminally dangerous. Hazmat transport trucking company shut down Rock City Stone Company, LLC was ordered to immediately stop [...]
Truck deadheading is the practice of driving a semi-truck with an empty trailer. It happens when a trucker drops off a load but has to drive elsewhere to pick up another load. Those deadhead miles can be extremely dangerous. A truck deadheading is 2.5x more likely to crash than a truck carrying freight. The weather has more effect [...]
At least a dozen significant pending safety rules have just been shelved by the US Department of Transportation. Here are the nixed regulations that would have applied to trucking safety. Speed limiters There is a direct correlation between stopping distances and rate of speed. Small increases in speed have large effects on the force of an [...]
The phrase “changing lives” sounds positive: people making big choices, and overcoming adversity. I’m seen too many lives changed by just the opposite. A failure that seems small—like a distracted truck driver taking eyes off the road—can responsible for changing lives. “I’m really not sure what happened” On a sunny fall afternoon in Washington, Andy was [...]
On a warm June night in 2015, a trucker cruising down down a busy highway in Tennessee didn't slow for traffic. He never hit the brakes as his tractor-trailer slammed into a Prius at 80 mph. That car was stuck to the front grill of the truck for another 453 feet, as the truck hit seven more vehicles. [...]
Have you wondered if there have been more semi-truck crashes than usual in Washington State? In 2017, after a spate of high-profile semi crashes in Washington that resulted in serious injuries and/or closed major highways for hours, we looked into this question. The Washington State Patrol's Collision Analysis Tool shows 1087 semi crashes met the damage threshold for reporting in 2017. [...]
