4 amazing truck and bridge collisions
Dec
A collection of what we believe are the most amazing truck and bridge collisions that didn’t result in a fatality or serious injury.
Iowa – Oct 5th, 2006. A truck company representative who declined to give his or the driver’s names said, the driver “didn’t see the low-bridge signs.” (Photo courtesy: Matt Ryerson/The Daily Iowan)
Davenport, Iowa – Nov 18th, 2008. This truck had it’s top literally ‘peeled off’ after making it completely through a railroad overpass before realizing that the truck was too tall. (Photo courtesy: Larry Fisher/Quad-City Times)
Greensboro, Carolina – Oct 1st, 2007. The driver of a tractor trailer used her best judgment to drive under this railway bridge but misjudged by 18 inches. (Photo courtesy: Amy Dominello / News & Record)
Kansas – Feb 15th, 2006. On Interstate 70 just west of Hays, a semi-tractor trailer, hauling a track hoe excavator, hit a bridge causing the boom to crash right through the bridge. (Photo courtesy: Steven Hausler/AP Photo)
The amazing part about these accidents is that it’s really not uncommon. You only have to misjudge a bridge height by an inch and you’ll peel the top like a sardine tin. These days though, truck drivers don’t have much excuse because industry leading Fleet and Truck GPS systems now include truck attributes for every road.
Truck Attributes?
There are all sorts of road restrictions throughout the US (and they vary in every state), specifying what types of vehicles are allowed in certain streets, bridges and tunnels and so on. The obvious ones are the ones that clearly (as seen above) just don’t fit. The not so obvious ones may be whether the size of your trailer length can handle a turn from this street to that street without knocking down people’s fences. Or whether the load you are moving is legally allowed on this road at this time of day and/or season.
It’s a good thing that there is now software to handle and process this information for you. To utilise this data a truck driver simply needs to enter the weight, height, width and some other attributes about their load into the system and the software will route to your destination on the safest and most fuel efficient route.
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:46 am
Another advantage of the design of articulated mini loaders is that the mast is attached to the front chassis. In a skid steer the main mast pivot points are mounted just behind your shoulder on the chassis. Attaching the mast to the front chassis in a min loader allows the bucket to be further out in front of the operator. When loading a truck in a skidsteer your face is virtually against the side of the truck when you are dumping – because skid steers have very little reach. The biggest reason this is such a disadvantage of a skidsteer is if you overfill your bucket and raise it up to its highest point and crowd back further, soil can easily fall back onto the operator, creating a dangerous situation. In mini loaders however, if you try to create the same situation, the spoil will generally fall out of the bucket and onto the ground in front of the operator, not putting them into a dangerous situation as the back of the bucket is a lot further forward. This may be a safety hazard on skidsteers, and operators need to be aware of it in all loaders, however in day to day operation skidsteer operators must face a lot more dust as the bucket is right in infront of their face, whereas mini loaders, when they create dust during loading and unloading and leveling, it generally blows away or settles by the time it reaches the operator. Obviously this is of no concern if a cabin is used on the mini loader or skid steer.