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Judge denies re-trial to company whose truck slammed into the California Zephyr
Justice was well served in this case.
I feel that the need to pass a law like the have with in-place with school bus drivers and want-to-be school bus drivers.
If you have one ticket ever in your life of driving you can not work for us. If you get any type of ticket even down to a parking violation, you loss your job. A person knows better, but if you are that dumb, DON’T DRIVE.
Also if there is laws that say a company is aware of drivers with a problem, then they are saying please take my business and sell it to pay for the damages that have and could happened.
This country has laws in-place ti protect the DC politician, but not its citizens.
We as voters should be thanking justice for this and send a message to DC to fix this now not 20 years from now.
They did great on moving on getting CTC in-place.
Now it is time to work on commercial driving nation wide.
Not even a parking ticket? There would be no truck drivers in NYC…
The Zeph was westbound.
“Nevada trucking company which had one of its trucks slam into the California Zephyr in 2011.” How about: company that owned the truck that, “…had one of its trucks…” sounds like they gave the driver instructions to do it on purpose.
TO: Justin Robertshaw:
Why are you linking school bus drivers to a driver of a truck. I am a school bus driver and retired professional railroader. Most school bus drivers and truck drivers are commercial drivers and require a commercial driver’s license from their respective state. In addition we all need a DOT physical and must carry that medical card with us at all times. To say that I would lose my job if I received a traffic ticket is unreasonable. I have to report to my safety department immediately that I have received a ticket for an offensive. I am curious if you are a commercial driver?
On average another Trucking Compny goes bankrupt about every few hours in the United States. I see that outfit filing in 5, 4, 3,…
Good for the judge. The weasels didn’t get to weasel. Now let’s hope they pay up instead of going conveniently bankrupt.
to Justin Robertshaw: that’s an overly draconian reaction. it is well known that many tickets are simply nuisance tickets written to raise money for the ‘offended’ jurisdiction and have no relation at all to “promoting safe driving”.
Given that this driver had a history of speeding, I’d say the company did in a sense give the driver instructions to do this!
Any driver approaching a level crossing should know that they might have to stop for a train. I remember in Japan, all drivers stop and look to see if it is clear before driving across; at least they used to when I was here in the 1960s.
There are exemptions to the medical card but those apply to those who work for a gov’t agency ( state, county, city, taxing district ) but our licenses are only good in the state where issued if you claim that exemption. Working for one of those also gets you a very good shot at getting fired/demoted if you have any alcohol in your system, medications in your system that have not been reported to HR, speeding tickets, accidents that are your fault in their vehicle. And forget the .04 BAC, >.01 and an accident that is your fault or ticket will get HR’s attention. Parking tickets and non-moving tickets are frowned on but normally unless you have a number will not get you fired. And a LEO can enforce the same rules on you in a private vehicle which most without a CDL would not know. Having a CDL puts us under a higher level of scrutiny no matter what we are driving at the time.
As for this truck driver, I bet he was racing to beat the train. He lost. Sadly, so did some passengers and the Conductor on the railroad car. Camera on board the loco showed that the gates were down and the horn was being sounded. Truck driver crossed the road centerline with his brakes locked before impact. There were also overhead flashing warning lights before he even got to the gates.
If it’s a tie at the RR crossing the highway vehicle loses. This axiom needs to be pounded into the head of every driver each time he/she applies for a drivers license or renewal.