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…The semi was headed west when its raised bed slammed into the overhead sign near mile marker 200 as it approached the I-64/I-295 split.
Virginia State Police said the crash happened shortly after 9:30 a.m.
“The cab continued on and then stopped, obviously, because it had separated from the bed of the tractor-trailer,” Matt Demlein, a spokesperson for Virginia State Police, said. “We’re still investigating as to what led up to it actually hitting the sign. It was empty at the time.”
Troopers do not know why the bed was raised or how long it was up before the crash. But officials said the truck had stopped at a weigh station about a mile earlier, which is equipped with cameras…
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My ten year old basic model sedan will jerk to a halt and put the transmission in Park if I try to move with the driver door not fully closed. I’d think a semi would be able to detect and alert that the damn dumper (?) is extended. Wow.
You need to be able to move when dumping stuff. Above a certain speed an alarm would make sense, but disabling the truck once it’s up to speed is dangerous.
Well sure I’ve never tested it going highway speed but if I don’t fully close the door and try to pull out of a parking spot it moves like an inch then says “nope”. But my post was to at least alert the driver that the thing was not locked down - that seems pretty simple.
Yeah true, an alert above a certain speed makes a lot of sense.
Or even a warning light for crying out loud.
Actual footage before the crash:
Can’t park there
Ya gotta move ya ca’!
Aren’t most trucks equipped with interlocks that prevent travelling at speed when the bed isn’t fully lowered?
No. Every couple years we get inquiries for it, but they don’t want to pay to have it installed.
Probably one complication is that the trucks need to be able to drive while the bed is up in normal operation. They have to move forward while dumping to spread the load.
Not just to spread it, they have to scooch a bit to let the material fall. The tightest end dump pile is still a fat line.
The tightest end dump pile is still a fat line.
This is an amusing sentence out of context.
“Shit, that’s just Tuesday night around here”
At speed?
Therein lies the complication.
Nah, all trucks transmit their speed on the CAN network. It’s very simple to implement.
Sounds like you found your million dollar idea! Now its as easy as cashing all your cheques! Congratulations!
It is easy to implement. the challenge is convicing the bean counters providing a safety feature for the rare instance of the driver being a dumbass is worth the cost.
Not just that, but you need a standard to communicate it truck to trailer and retrofit it so it all plays nice.
Could be done on a dump truck though if there is a way to set a separate governor in the computer that gets enabled by the bed up light somehow.
All trucks support J1939 TSC1 message.
And does the pigtail to the trailer support it?
Usually you can access it through the obd2 port.
But realistically, there’s no reason why you can’t design the hydraulics in a way that the cylinder is always leaking through an orifice and the dump trailer is constantly slowly lowering itself unless you are actively holding the Up button. There’s never a case where a truck needs to hold it’s dump up in the air for long periods of time.
That is a hilarious and practical suggestion. It would confuse and irritate so many people, even though it’s no issue like you say.
He might not have been fully up to speed yet. This sign is just past a weigh station (I’ve driven this stretch many, many times), and VDOT said he had just gone through the station. Though that doesn’t answer why the bed was up. Could have bumped the switch?
:::Edit to strike through this nonsense:::I am leaning toward the other explanation of drive shaft breaking and pole vaulting the trailer into the sign.
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A very excellent point. I should have realized.
Even if it did, it would not pole vault. Mythbusters tried polevaulting a car, it barely lifts the rear end off the ground. The drive shaft is just a hollow tube that bends instead of tranfering all the enegry to the vehicle.
All those years of GTA6 finally paid off.
The driveshaft popped off, rammed in the road and flipped up the entire trailer, it’s rare but it happens and it’s cool every time.
That’s a hydraulic lifter, not a driveshaft. The bed was raised and hit the sign.
If that’s the case, why did they arrest the driver on reckless driving? Sounds like pure accident. Even if it was negligent maintenance, that’s not the driver’s fault, that’s on the trailer owner. Right? (IANACDL 😄)
Maintenance would be on the driver since it’s his responsibility to shut down the truck. U-Joint failures happen (on the tractor), but should be inspected daily (finger quotes).
Doesn’t matter though, cause he left his bed up. There’s no driveshaft on the trailer. If there were, it would take forever to hook a trailer lol.
That doesn’t mean the driver was actually driving recklessly just that police think he was. It says he was just at a weigh station prior to the accident so maybe it was some fluke that caused it to raise up after he left.
There is no driveshaft to the trailer axles lmao.
Tell me you’ve never looked under a tractor-trailer unit without telling me you’ve never…
I have a bridge near me that gotten taken out similarly. I wonder if it was this I was assuming the driver forgot to put it back down. Driver in my case got injured and I have a couple extra miles commute for a year. Good news is the bridge is almost fixed!
How high was that trailer? Also what was its height?
On a scale from 1 to 10, that trailer was at a Snoop Dogg.
So was the trailer wanting to go to Richmond or Washington? I need to know.
when you see a fork in the road, pick it up.
Maybe it wanted to turn around. Busch Gardens is just 40 miles back.
It’s there a reason why these trucks don’t have a safety that keeps you from shifting out of neutral when the bed is raised?
Or at least angrily beeps at the driver?You need to be able to move while dumping stuff. A beeping noise during normal operations would be so annoying, people would just figure out how to disable it.
An alarm above a certain speed would make sense, though.
You need to pull forward as you dump, but it wouldn’t be hard to put in a really annoying beeper if you use anything except the first couple gears.
It would actually be easier to have a float in the wet kit hydraulic tank on the truck side that alarms when the hydraulic fluid is low.
