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

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

Difficult from the front line...

Fatal Crash Shakes Fellow Tow Truck Driver

By Charles Ewing FOX8 News

5:23 PM EDT, May 18, 2010

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - The staff at Quality Towing can't get Monday morning's fatal crash at the Interstate 40/U.S. 311 interchange out of their heads.

One of Quality Towing's drivers, Christian Rufus, was about to pull a car and truck out of the mud on the side of the ramp when a truck lost control and slid into Rufus and two others. One man died at the scene, and emergency workers took Rufus and another man to area hospitals.

"Worse wreck I've ever been on. I've been towing seven years. It was pretty bad," said Chris Grubbs, a fellow tow truck driver who rushed to the scene when he heard about the accident.

"He is my best friend, more than a co-worker. We grew up together. We went to high school together," he said. "I was shook up at first. I didn't know the situation, but I am glad he is alright and sorry for the other folks that lost."

Grubbs said Rufus is now resting at home.tower, towing, tow men, tow truck, wreck, wrecker

I had another accident call an hour later. That other scene flashed in my head and probably will from now on," he said.

To see the video story click HERE

Perils of prom season making headlines again

From The Washington Post
By John Kelly

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Ours can't be the only area household where a brief Associated Press story was torn from Monday's paper and left at a teenager's place at the dining room table. The headline: "Post-prom crash kills King George teen." It's prom season, which means it's prom-crash season, which means it's agonized-parents season. It also means that smashed cars are sprouting in front of high schools, grim tableaux to illustrate that speed kills, that alcohol kills, that texting kills. David Morton's company has dropped shattered vehicles off at about 10 Montgomery County schools in the past few weeks. He runs a Rockville-based towing firm. "The mouths drop open, the eyes open wide," David said of the students' reactions when the cars are delivered. "You can tell it's making an impact on them." Though macabre rumors attach themselves to the cars, David said he doesn't use vehicles that people have actually been killed in -- injured, yes, but not killed. He doesn't want a family member to drive by and see it. The vehicles typically come from the police abandoned auto unit. David said he supports MADD programs and SADD programs and anything else that tries to keep teens safe behind the wheel. "We're the ones that always see the aftermath," he said of tow truck drivers. "We're the ones getting them off the trees, watching the bodies come out of the cars." In Montgomery, about a half-dozen companies are authorized to tow away the vehicular remains of fatal accidents. The police call on a rotation. Since the death cars are evidence, the tow truck drivers must be certified with one of several accrediting groups. David is the president of his company, with 20 trucks on the road, but he goes out on runs, too. "Adults don't bother me too bad," David said. "It's the kids that bother me the most. Some nights, I'll get back to the house and lay in bed. I just can't sleep, and I wonder: What could have stopped that from happening?" Don't drink. Don't speed. Wear seat belts. Go to the after-prom party. Teens: Do whatever you can not to be a story ripped from the paper, next year's cautionary tale.

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Unlit, or dimly lit, license plates run afoul of law

Unlit, or dimly lit, license plates run afoul of law

Sunday, May 9, 2010

By MAURA AMMENHEUSER
Special to The Press-Enterprise

Q: Readers are full of questions about lighting.

The first is Barbara Stevens, a Hemet resident, who called to say her son was pulled over by a police officer.

"He was not cited but he was told his license plate lights were 'too dim,' " Stevens said.

That prompted her to ask: Is there a law that requires a light to illuminate the tags?

A: Yes, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Tel Preszler said.

It's section 24601 of the state vehicle code, and it says vehicles must have a taillight or a separate lamp that throws white light on the rear license plate during darkness.

The light needs to be bright enough to allow the tag to be read from 50 feet behind the vehicle. Just for good measure, another section of the vehicle code, section 24252(a) says that "all lighting equipment of a required type installed on a vehicle shall at all times be maintained in good working order."

So Stevens' son should fix whatever bulb is meant to light his tags.

Q: Fred Bartz, of Temecula, posed two questions about lights on vehicles, both relating to how well drivers can see a vehicle in front of them.

"I have seen vehicles where a decal or partially opaque sticker has been applied to the rear vehicle glass," over the "center high mounted stop light," the red light that functions as a third brake light in a vehicle's rear windshield, Bartz wrote in an e-mail.

He asked whether there is a rule requiring people to keep the view of that light free.

He also asked about the rules for brake lights on vehicles that are being towed.

Recently he's noticed vehicles ranging from tow trucks and semis to large RVs towing other vehicles behind them.

"In some instances I have seen either brake lights added to the (towed) vehicle," or two vehicles connected electrically so that the towed car's brake lights operate when the driver of the towing vehicle presses the brake.

"However, in some instances there were no brake lights operating on the vehicle being towed," Bartz said.

What is required?

A: Bartz's suspicion that the law demands visible brake lights is right.

The state vehicle code requires motorists to ensure that all their "stop lamps," as the code calls them, can be easily seen. Section 24603 doesn't explicitly ban stickers blocking view of that center-mounted stop light, but it does say, in part: "All stop lamps shall be plainly visible and understandable from a distance of 300 feet to the rear, both during normal sunlight and at nighttime." (If a vehicle is large enough to require clearance lights, its brake lights must be visible from 500 feet away.)

So, if something is blocking a brake light so it can't be seen from that distance, that would be a violation of the code.

As for brake lights on towed vehicles, California law doesn't require them if other drivers can see the corresponding lights on the towing vehicle itself, Teszler said.

Vehicle code section 24605 says that, in the case of a tow truck, if the towed vehicle's brake lights, taillights and turn signals aren't on, the tower must mount some on it.

However, part (c) of this section adds that brake lights and turn signal lights aren't necessary on the towed vehicle, if the corresponding lights on the towing vehicle -- any kind of towing vehicle, not just a commercial tow truck -- can be seen on either side of the vehicle from the rear during the tow.

Section (b) adds that, in the case of a commercial tow truck, if the taillight on the towed vehicle can't be lit and it's nighttime, the tower must mount a taillight on the towed vehicle so it can be seen from behind.

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