How long does it take a truck to stop & is it criminal if he doesn't?

Hi, Heavier mass accelrates more increasing speed.

Reply to
Tony Hwang
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There was no Italian car industry in Galileo's time. Fiat didn't begin manufacturing until at least a decade of his death. So the Italians had to import all their cars from Germany. That's why Galileo dropped a VW.

Silly mistake. I'll bet your face is red.

Reply to
deadrat

Air resistance wouldn't have been a factor.

Reply to
deadrat

I own a villa near there.

Reply to
deadrat

Oh, gosh. I am so embarassed. I might not be able to post again, for hours.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

Not in California. It's against the vehicle code.

Could you cite the section of the California Vehicle Code that mandates this?

Reply to
deadrat

Don't kid a kidder. You can't even spell "embarrassed."

Don't wait for hundreds of minutes. Get right back up on that horse.

Reply to
deadrat

Hi, Law has to regulate every thing in our lives? That sort of things are common sense. I live in the foothills, often drive in the Rockies. We have runaway lanes on critical hill, brake check stop turn out at the bottom of hills(passes) every where. When flat plains folks come out here some of them freeze in the mountain roads. They are so scared. This week 4 people from overseas died colliding head on. Both in rented car and motor home. Just couldn't control there vehicles in winding hilly narrow road with wild animals roaming,etc. Unless one encounters unexpected mechanical failure, driver should be in control at all times. I drove big trucks as a kid, my dad used to own transportation company. How about driving a fully loaded 4x4 truck grinding up the winding hill for supply run. You can't see ahead, one hand is holding a guiding rope strung on the side of the hill, if you let go the rope, maybe you're going off the edge. DMZ, in Korea. Have you driven on a switch back roads? Driven Northern Italian Alps? Or going to Amalfi from Tuscany in S, Italy. Or Road going out to Hanna in Hawaii in the pitch dark night?

Reply to
Tony Hwang

No, but in the discussion on misc.legal of criminal liability for this collision, it's important to know whether there's a legal requirement that trucks check their breaks before heading down a steep grade.

Common sense won't determine what happens to the driver of the truck in question.

Thanks for sharing your fascinating personal history. Just for myself, I'd love to hear more about your experience as a kid driving the big rigs, not to mention your penchant for traveling around the world looking for dangerous places to drive. Maybe you should take that to alt.talk.misc.whocares.

Reply to
deadrat

Tony Hwang wrote, on Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:28:05 -0600:

At that time in the morning (8am on a Thursday), I doubt anyone was speeding, simply because it's a two-lane road (each side) which is windy and steep (6% grade, for about 3 or 4 very curvy miles).

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The trucker was on the last of those five curvy miles, where cars in front on a curve (threre are no straight sections of this road) apparently were stopped (usually that's due to someone in the left lane trying to get over to the right lane for the next exit, but in traffic, they have to go SLOWER than the right lane in order to cut into the right lane - but I don't know why the cars were stopped).

Whether or not he checked the brakes isn't yet in the newspaper record as far as I can tell.

Here's the latest on that from the CHP:

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Reply to
Jesse Davis

Ann Marie Brest posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP

I am not an accident re constructionist so I don't know. It depends on too many factors to determine here.

It is a crime scene. Somebody died! Every accident can be considered a crime; even with no fatalities.

Quoted is a nebulous term. This is how crashes happen, human failure, negligence.

Read replies above.

Reply to
Tekkie®

Tony Hwang wrote, on Sat, 12 Jul 2014 12:05:20 -0600:

I've seen runaway lanes on interstates, but this highway is so curvy I suspect there is not a single straight section in the entire length of the downhill this trucker was traveling (northbound, Highway 17, at Bear Creek Road).

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This article says the grade is 6%, so I don't know how steep that is but I know the road is very curvy and only two lanes, with a Jersey barrier in the middle most of the way.

It's 6% for about 3 or 4 miles, so, the trucker would have tested his brakes

3 or 4 miles prior anyway.

He is quoted in that article as saying: "It wasn't decreasing speed. It kept going up 'cause it was, like, too steep for me," Rabinderbal Singh told KTVU. The truck's brakes were ineffective and only emitted smoke, he said. Though he has just under three months' experience driving such a vehicle, Singh told the station he followed his training and swerved into the guardrail to try to stop the descending rig."

As for safety checks (whatever that includes), the article says: "Surinderpal Singh, the owner of SBT Trucking -- which consists only of the truck, himself and the driver (to whom he is not related) -- told KTVU a safety check was conducted on the truck the morning of the crash, and that it was inspected by the CHP two weeks ago."

Reply to
Jesse Davis

Tony can't kid a kidder? At least I didnt' mispel that.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

deadrat posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP

He was: failure to control vehicle and failure to yield to a stopped vehicle. CA law may vary.

Reply to
Tekkie®

Evan Platt posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP

This topic is really going! I'll actually have to read the posts, getting interesting.

Reply to
Tekkie®

Tony Hwang wrote, on Sat, 12 Jul 2014 11:29:23 -0600:

Paste this into maps.google.com to see where the accident was: 37.187120, -121.991077

The highway is the main corridor between the quaint 60's town of Santa Cruz California and the bustling tech mecca of San Jose, and the papers all said it carries 54,000 vehicles a day (so presumably that's roughly around 25K commuters a day).

It's curvy. There isn't a single straight section that I know of in the 3 or 4 miles down the hill from about 3,000 feet to about sea level in San Jose except just after where the truck crashed (so it never got to the straight section).

It's only two lanes on each side, separated by a Jersey barrier.

I'm told (but do not know for a fact) that the townsfolk in Santa Cruz don't want a "real" interstate to connect the two towns because then they'll just be a suburb of San Jose, and we already have a half dozen of those which turn into your classic crappy suburbia.

So, Santa Cruz, I'm told, doesn't want the highway modernized because they want to keep their small beach town flavor.

I don't know how true that is, but the point is that there are no runaway lanes on this road, and, I suspect there's no straight place to put them.

The truck crashed almost exactly on the San Andreas fault line, which is where the only straight section is (as the road crosses from one continent to the other, there is a flat valley floor of crushed rock, which is just after where the truck crashed).

The fault line is about 1/2 mile wide, and that's the only straight part of the road, but the truck never made it to there, but stopped a few hundred yards short of that straight away.

Point is, there certainly are no runaway lanes, but, I don't think there is any room for them either.

Reply to
Jesse Davis

That sounds scary as hell.

I love driving in Italy. I've driven most of it but the coastal roads are a lot of fun.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

trader_4 wrote, on Sat, 12 Jul 2014 05:38:06 -0700:

This article says everyone saw smoke coming from the truck's brakes. What does that tell us about what was happening with respect to friction?

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Reply to
Jesse Davis

Jesse Davis wrote, on Sat, 12 Jul 2014 19:57:21 +0000:

The accident happened here (paste this into Google maps):

37.186652, -121.991102
Reply to
Jesse Davis

Potential crime scene, perhaps.

Not every action that results in somebody's death is a crime.

Only by an ignoramus.

Reply to
deadrat

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