The one with the guy holding the target is a double whammy.

Where does the projectile go even if it hits the target?

quote:

Originally posted by bill h:
Where does the projectile go even if it hits the target?

Into the men's room?

Having worked in several rock quarries over the years and sometimes seeing hundreds of tons of rock suddenly fall from the walls for no reason, the second picture which shows the person sitting out on the point of rock gives me chills.

Ref: Pic #9

For a second there, I thought someone had snapped a picture of me installing my new airbags last week......

On second thought, it can't be.....My jack is blue........

Picture #10 reminds me of a trucking story where a driver was hauling a load of rebar and ran out of air coming down a hill. Once he realized that he was going to hit he dove down to the floor of the cab, just as the load of rebar sliced straight through. He got off with nary a scratch, save one good gash through his buttocks, which he proudly showed anyone who dared to ask.

I prefer seeing flatbeds on the road; then I can at least see if they actually tied the load down well or not. Those sea cans give me the willies.

Thread drift - This morning's paper reported a local log truck driver faces vehicular homicide charges. Overloaded 7700 lbs., taking a curve too fast, the bolts that fastened his log rack sheared, the load flew off, and killed two U of Wash. scientists in a Saturn coming the other way.

/continuing thread drift

I was going to respond with something about logging trucks having to weigh everytime they load up, but I remembered picking up a load of lumber in northern california and heading toward Ontario. I weighed in the lumber yard, with a full load of fuel, at 79,000#--well under the legal limit. Drove about 8 hours and then debated about fueling up, as I was down to a quarter tank or so, and decided to wait a while where fuel was cheaper. Hit an open scale, wheeled in, and watched the numbers start at 80500# (500lbs overweight) and work downwards. They finally levelled off at 79,940lbs. Had I loaded up with another 200 gallons of fuel I'd have gone to jail, or at least paid a hefty fine. And, even though I weighed at the lumber yards faulty scale, I would have still been at fault.

It was a Washington State Patrol investigation that determined the overweight & recommended prosecution. The particular truck had been once before ordered out of service by WSP pending correction of other mechanical problems, & the company has a history of violations. After this one they'll hopefully be out of business.

Is the driver the only one taking heat for this? Sounds like it goes higher up.

Unfortunately it usually takes a fatality to get a bad apple company off the road. String together a bunch of fatalities and they then go after everyone. Witness the fact that Ontario (Canada) truck drivers aren't allowed to even *adjust* their own brakes anymore due to a few knuckleheads who couldn't figure out how to do it and ended up running over 4-wheelers. It's not a bad idea to have mechanics adjust brakes, but I can't count the number of times I left the yard and either tightened a soft set, or more often, loosened one brake that was catching too early and leaving a plume of smoke behind me. I'd get in trouble for doing that now...

Hopefully this'll be enough to not only get rid of this company, but also re-examine and follow-up on the companies who have been previously cited and see how well they've been holding up. Logging trucks gimme the heebie-jeebies.

It's not always the river's fault.
Around here the 2 major trucking routes are the 401 and the QEW. Very heavy truck traffic and according to the news accounts, they have had a problem with wheels coming off. There have been several fatalities that made headlines. The resulting crackdown was a safety blitz that brought to light lots of dangerous safety problems due to poor maintenance. They seem to be watching the trucking industry more closely since the tire fatalities and they are pulling dangerous trucks off the road all the time it seems.
The other big road safety item in the news was all the U Haul rentals that are absolutely deadly. They had one on the news that had a broken rear brake pipe that had been pinched over with pair of pliers and rented out to some young folks for a move. Front brakes only on that truck!
Makes you think when one of those big guys rolls past you doing 75!
Don

quote:

Originally posted by bill h:
Is the driver the only one taking heat for this? Sounds like it goes higher up.

Hi Don,

If I recall correctly, virtually all of the flying wheels in Ontario were Alcoa buds, not good old-fashioned hub and spoke rims. The problem, as we truckers saw it, was two-fold: The rims were overtighted by using a beefy air-wrench and over-torquing the studs, and therefore weakening them. The second was that--during that period--the state of Ontario roads was deplorable which aggrevated the weakened studs.

The final nail in the coffin is that we in Ontario were allowed to run far higher weights than most other jurisdictions. High weight + Crappy roads + over-torqued studs = flying wheels.