Submitted by Ben Wilmer
The South River & Lexington Fire Departments, and Lexington Rescue Squad responded to a reported tractor trailer over-turned, on fire, with entrapment on November 18, 2009 on I-81 at the 197.3 mile marker at 08:04. Crews arrived to find no fire and the driver was out of the cab. The truck was traveling south bound and ran out of the road into the median and came to a rest in the shoulder of the north bound lane.
Comment using Facebook here or comment the old fashioned way below
Powered by Facebook Comments
PLEASE GOOGLE “DEFORMABLE KINGPIN” that explains a simple to understand solution to forbid a tractor to follow into destruction during rollover events. The concept is the same as to why you have fuses or circuit breakers in electrical systems in your home, office or car — a failsafe — to prevent further destruction. This innovation is a simple modification of a component, the trailer’s coupling kingpin, whose design has been a standard for over 70 years, which can be made to deform and not allow an extremely stable tractor to follow to destruction when the trailer, that is the dominant controlling force, is in IMMINENT peril for rollover, that includes also blown over tractor trailers. The NHTSA & FMCSA continue to turn their backs and ignore their past funded research conclusions, as the trucking industry evolves greater unstable tractor trailers on our highways that have a primary attribute for increasing payload capacity. These catastrophes will continue to occur in thousands of accidents of this type each year as they have in the past, and continue to cause infrastructure damage that will harm and kill many hundreds of tractor occupants annually. These combination vehicles are incendiary bombs when carrying flammable material in tankers, and the flash point for these fires starts with the tractor’s involvement. A statement received from the FMCSA states “There are a variety of technologies for preventing rollover crashes and we believe motor carriers should have as much flexibility as possible in selecting technologies to prevent crashes.” Clearly the fox is allowed to guard the hen house!!! The harm, death & destruction will continue with combination vehicle rollover accidents. Donald J. Kaleta