A towers view of safety

Safety safety safety.

I can’t stress this enough.  Too many drivers are getting injured or killed on the highways from numerous things.  The biggest thing that I can stress is BE SEEN!!!  Wear a vest to light up the scene.  There are numerous things you can do.  I remember one time where I was dispatched to a disabled motorist on a toll road.  It was a BMW and came out as a flat tire.  I thought to myself great, this person has never changed a tire before in their entire life and will most likely sit in the car and leave me to the work.  I arrive on the location of the disablement and find that the shoulder was barely enough to have the BMW on the side of the road, let alone my 21’ ford Jerr Dan Rollback.  I saw the disabled car and turned on every light I had so other motorists could see me.  I positioned my truck behind the disabled car so that as motorists came flying by they could see all the lights much better and not slam into us.  I also pulled a page from the police and decided to angle my truck so it gave me a little more room to work, keeping me out of harms way. 

Safety is the biggest thing that we need to follow out there, but so few drivers do.  Wear the safety vest.  Turn on all your lights especially at night.  People can see those work lights and your warning lights. Put extra warning lights on the back of the truck, more than the front.  And if that does not work, flares and triangles are a great tool to keep you safe, whether they are battery powered or the old fashioned ones.

Matt Thompson

Wrecker Division Resident Tower and Jerr-Dan specialist

East Coast Truck and Trailer

2906 Elmhurst Lane

Portsmouth, VA 23701

1-800-849-2178 (toll free)

(757) 465-2200 x336

mthompson@ectts.com

Parts.ectts.com

Distracted Driving at a whole new level

pulled from Toronto Sun
July 21,2010

A Kitchener truck driver is facing a careless driving charge but on the bright side, his tooth doesn’t hurt anymore.

Lambton County OPP say they stopped a big rig driver doing some driving dentistry along Hwy. 402 on Wednesday.

Const. John Reurink told the Sun Saturday it’s the first time he’s ever heard of a driver being pulled over performing dental surgery.

“I’ve never heard of this sort of thing occurring before,” Reurink said, adding he has stopped drivers doing their make-up, reading a map or talking on a cellphone. “Somebody doing an amateur tooth pulling? That’s a first.”

Reurink said it all started June 30 when an officer was on Hwy. 402 in Warwick Township, near Sarnia, and a passing driver pointed him to a tractor trailer being driven “all over the road.”

The officer found the eastbound rig and pulled it over.

Cops determined the 58-year-old driver was driving so poorly because he was trying to pull out a tooth while he was driving.

“The driver was very forthright with the officer,” Reurink said.

The amateur dentist of a driver had rigged a string around his hurting tooth and then tied the other end to the roof of the cab, police said.

“One good bump and the tooth should come out,” police explained.

Turns out the “one good bump” likely did come along at some point.

“The evidence of his efforts were nearby,” Reurink said.

When the driver was stopped the officer found a bloody tooth and a string lying next to him.

Strangely, police say the road down that way isn’t that bumpy and was recently resurfaced.

“He may have been better off on a sideroad,” Reurink said.

Police won’t be releasing the driver’s name because he’s charged under the Highway Traffic Act, not the Criminal Code, and they figure he’d be “continuously bombarded” by media trying to talk to him about his stunt - which would likely be more of a headache than a toothache.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------







msaks@ectts.com -


- msaks@ectts.com

'News and Specials from East Coast Truck and Trailer Sales!'

'News and Specials from East Coast Truck and Trailer Sales!'

We have a winner!

Tow the car before the accident..

With all the press and bad statistics about roadside work, their are beacons of light. Yes, there is actually some positive news. This page is a tow service being used to keep people off the road BEFORE they have had to much to drink. It makes perfect sense..why not tow the car before its wrecked and before anyone gets hurt.


Web page link

Staggering Statistics by the Federal Highway Administration

The next time you go on a call to tow a car stranded on the highway, keep in mind these statistics by the Federal Highway Administration:

• One work zone fatality every 10 hours (2.3 a day)
• One work zone injury every 13 minutes (110 a day)
• An average of 40,000 injuries a year

Towers, this is the environment to which you must often work. Usually with the spartan protection of a few lights, flares, and Atomic yellow vests. Do the math, on a roadside, every second you spend hooking a car, changing a tire, fixing a snatch block, moves you closer and closer to the statistics above. Here is the link to what the government is doing to combat this.

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/facts_stats/

The danger of the roadside worksite

5247 

This is the number of times drivers plowed into a work zone on the highway in New Jersey. In the towing industry there is an average of 50 casualties a year but shockingly its not higher when weighed against this statistic alone. The article link talks about just how dangerous those work areas can be. While it focuses on highway workers, towers and truckers both spend time on the roadside, in areas much more poorly lit than construction zones.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/89859652_North_Jersey_work_zones_are_danger_zones.html

Pickup hits parked tow truck on U.S. 1

Staff Report
May 20, 2010 12:01 PM

The Daytona Beach News-Journal

PORT ORANGE -- A pickup driving north on Ridgewood Avenue this morning slammed into a parked tow truck and also hit two other cars, fire officials said. Port Orange Fire-Rescue responded to the 10 a.m. crash near Farmbrook Road. The tow truck was parked along Ridgewood Avenue northbound in front of Universal Towing, said Tonya Saylor, fire department spokeswoman. The pickup driver hit the tow truck then careened into two other cars traveling in the same direction, officials said.The pickup, whose driver was not identified, was taken to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach in stable condition. The drivers of the other two cars, who did not have any passengers with them, refused transport to the hospital.