Tour Bus vs FedEx Truck = Major Crash on I-5 in N CA

[RJ]

Very sad:

http://www.kcra.com/news/chp-i5-closed-in-orland-after-bus-fedex-crash/25424704

[luvrbus]

Fedx should have stayed in the delivery and air freight business you see more of their trucks wrecked than any other carrier ever since they bought the outfit in Or or WA I am thinking it was Glens what a shame   

[Jeremy]

I would guess that America was almost certainly the very first country to develop a high-speed multi-lane road network (1920s?) and back then a simple grass median strip between the lanes was sufficient. I don't know about the rest of the world but in Europe at least the opposing lanes are invariably much closer but always, always have barriers between them to prevent accidents such as this.

And apparently we can thank the Nazi party for those barriers - I was reading a magazine article just the other day about how everyone else in Europe based their roads on the high speed and super-safe German autobahns which were developed in the late 1930s. They were far ahead of their time but were built by the Nazis largely as a propaganda exercise - and to publisise them they then closed-off sections of the autobahns and used them to run a state-sponsored competition between Mercedes and Auto Union for the first car to reach 150mph. And then they put the engines into Messerschmidts and invaded Poland

Jeremy

[CrabbyMilton]

You can put all of the safety items on the road and in vehicles but if you have a stupid, careless, or impaired driver, what makes you think those will do good for you? Take school buses for instance. They all have to be yellow by law supposedly in the name of safety yet idiots are still crashing inot them. Fire trucks and police cars have lights and sirens and airhorns in the case of fire apparatus and now some ambulances,yet people somehow run into them.

[belfert]

The article states it may have been a car that forced the driver to take evasive action.  Now, it may have been better for the truck driver to hit that car than to take action that ultimately caused the truck to cross the median.

I'm certain that cost is the only real reason we haven't put concrete median barriers on every interstate in the USA.  We can't afford to keep the traffic lanes in decent shape so concrete median barriers are pretty low on the list.  It isn't just the cost of the concrete barrier, but also the cost of the storm sewers to handle runoff.  The depressed center median is often part of the drainage system.

Minnesota has installed many miles of cable median barriers to help prevent median crossover crashes.  Unfortunately, an 80,000 pound semi can sometimes crash right through them.  A lot of motorists hate them because they are placed on the edge of the highway and they say it causes thousands of dollars in damage if you hit them in the winter versus sliding down into the median and just needing a tow truck.  If you are routinely sliding off the highway in winter you are driving too fast for the conditions.

[Iceni John]

Another benefit of center median barriers is to reduce glare at night from oncoming cars whose drivers are not yet fully aware of the concept of dimming headlights.   (Notice I said Cars  -  most trucks' and buses' drivers dim their lights when needed.)

I-5 is not the most exciting road to drive through the Central Valley, so it's easy to lose attention without having many visual stimuli to look at.   Some European countries have installed sculptures and artwork along boring stretches of autoroute specifically to help keep drivers alert.   There are even some long tunnels in Norway which have curves in them for no other reason than to keep drivers from getting hypnotized by the lights inside.

John 

[TomC]

One of the hardest things you have to learn when being a truck driver is not to swirve to avoid an accident. Dog runs out in the street-oh well. Deer crosses in front of you, try to slow down, but go ahead and hit it (I have-big buck Elk). Car crosses in front and you can't stop, take it out. Much better then crossing into the other side of the freeway.

Course if an accident already occured that bent the truck steering into a left turn that the driver couldn't hold-that's a different story-that's why it is called an accident. Dumb things that drivers do all the time is a collision. Good Luck, TomC

[Dave5Cs]

Just on the local news.
7500 tractors at Fedx. in 2013 they had 1000 crashes with 394 being fatal involving their trucks. The Bus was a brand new bus and didn't even have logos on it yet just colored strips. Now the ones with green writting after the Fedx sign are private contractors that deliver ground. The others are red and blue which are company owned. They didn't say which ones were in the statistics.

[belfert]

Just on the local news.
7500 tractors at Fedx. in 2013 they had 1000 crashes with 394 being fatal involving their trucks. The Bus was a brand new bus and didn't even have logos on it yet just colored strips. Now the ones with green writting after the Fedx sign are private contractors that deliver ground. The others are red and blue which are company owned. They didn't say which ones were in the statistics.

If the crashes include all tractors, trucks, and other vehicles owned or contracted by Fedex that be would a lot different than 7,500 tractors having 1,000 crashes.  It would be interesting to know how Fedex stacks up against UPS and the USPS in incidents per million miles driven.

[Boomer]

Uh, hate to tell you Tom but a male elk is called a bull, not a buck.

[luvrbus]

Lol a bull is right and you hit one of those suckers is like hitting a brick wall BTDT. Dave in all my travels on I-10 and I-40 I have never saw a UPS truck wrecked I am sure it happens but I never saw one in all the years going from AZ to TX, UPS doesn't seem to run the big HP trucks all decked out just the basic day cab plain old trucks running along at 60 mph and Fedx will pass you running 70 or 75 mph one thing about UPS they are the ugliest trucks on the road    

[Dave5Cs]

Clifford, that was Brian wondering about UPS trucks but I get what you are saying. Brian it would be interesting to see a company comparison on all of them with the private contractors being in their own category to see the differences between company owned etc. also the safety records of all.

Dave

[Iceni John]

Interesting new slant to this story:  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/12/california-crash-couple-truck-fire?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
So, was the trailer on fire, or the tractor?   Was this a brake fire?   We'll see what the investigation finds out.
The bus looks like a Setra.

John