CCJ

88 commercial carrier journal | december 2017 PREVENTABLE or NOT? Foggy morning breakdown for Doe P eering through an early-morning shroud of fog on the rural nearly-vacant two-lane Holstein Highway, tractor-trailer driver John Doe was rolling along at the posted speed limit of 55 mph while swapping entertaining CB tales of sadistic dispatchers with trucker Milly Moohouse, whose unit was about ve miles ahead. To enhance his attention to the driving task, Doe extracted a green Gummy Bear and popped it into his mouth. "Hey, Milly … yuck, yuck … did I ever tell yah about the time that … Holy Cat sh!!!" Suddenly, there was an ominous silence on Channel 19 while Doe, dropping his mike and attempting to force the brake treadle through the oor, applied a two- sted death grip to his steering wheel. e cause of his distress was Graham Grumbly, the visually impaired driver of a battered pickup truck who'd initially obeyed a stop sign on a side road but, appar- ently oblivious, had decided to pull onto Holstein Highway and into the path of the 18-wheeler! Unfortunately, Doe's panic stop did nothing but at-spot several tires before his tractor rammed the side of Grumbly's pickup. Luckily, Grumbly sustained no serious injuries. Later, Doe contested the preventable-accident warning letter from his safety director, claiming that his tractor's low beams had been on, that he hadn't been speeding and that the other driver's stupidity was to blame. Asked to resolve the dispute, the National Safety Council's Accident Review Committee upheld the preventable ruling. While Doe admitted to seeing the pickup's lights at the stop sign, he'd made no e ort to slow down and/or sound his air horn in anticipation of the other driver blindly pulling onto the foggy highway. Tractor-trailer driver John Doe was obeying the speed limit on a foggy two-lane highway when a pickup truck driver pulled out in front of him, causing a collision. Was this a preventable accident?

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