California Highway Patrol once backed the 'Truck Stopping Device' - Land Line Media

California Highway Patrol wants to mandate ELDs successful trucks that run lone wrong the state. According to CHP documents, the thought is to bring California into compliance with national physics logging instrumentality requirements.

What’s this? California wants to travel the feds alternatively than spell its ain way? Is this the aforesaid California that wants to modulate distant diesel engines? The aforesaid California that’s trying to destruct trucking’s accepted owner-operators? The aforesaid California that consistently enacts laws and issues regulations that powerfully abstracted it from each the different states that it pisses disconnected successful the process?

Wait. California Highway Patrol has much to say. Quoting that papers again, “ELDs volition heighten commercialized conveyance information by improving compliance with the applicable (hours of service) rules and reducing the wide paperwork load for some centrifugal carriers and drivers.”

Clearly, they person not been paying attraction to post-ELD information stats. ELDs person not made roads safer and whitethorn marque them much dangerous. And erstwhile did the California Highway Patrol commencement worrying astir different people’s paperwork?

So, what’s the existent crushed for intrastate ELDs successful California?

Beats me. But I’m not surprised. After all, we’re talking astir the aforesaid road patrol that erstwhile projected we mandate thing that was officially called the “Truck Stopping Device.”

The Truck Stopping Device was introduced successful November 2001, 2 months aft the violent attacks of Sept. 11. But that was a coincidence. It was really created successful effect to an earlier incident.

In January 2001, 37-year-old Mike Bowers, driving for Dick Simon Trucking of Salt Lake City, picked up a load of evaporated beverage successful Modesto, Calif. At astir 9:30 p.m. connected Tuesday, Jan. 16, Bowers drove the loaded motortruck northbound connected 11th Street successful Sacramento. He picked up speed, blasting his horn and moving reddish lights to the extremity of 11th Street. There, helium sped crossed N Street, onto the grounds of the authorities capitol and straight into the capitol gathering itself. The convulsive clang tore disconnected the saddle tanks and ignited a spectacular fire. Miraculously, determination was lone 1 casualty. Bowers died successful the clang and blaze.

People began wondering what would person happened if the trailer had been loaded with, say, gasoline alternatively of evaporated milk. All that wondering caused then-Gov. Gray Davis to bid the road patrol to travel up with a mode to halt a truckload of state earlier it could beryllium utilized arsenic a rolling violent bomb. The bureau came done for the politician – lad did they ever. Here is however it was described by the road patrol successful the “Truck Stopping Device Fact Sheet:”

“This is simply a mechanical instrumentality attached to the backmost of a tanker truck, designed to halt a stolen oregon hijacked truck. When bumped by a CHP cruiser from the rear, a leaf connected the wrong of the bumper sheers the aerial hose to brakes. The brakes connected each specified trucks are designed to fastener successful the lawsuit of the nonaccomplishment of aerial pressure.”

Got that? A California Highway Patrol car drives up down the unsafe motortruck and bumps into it. The motortruck stops and countless lives are saved.

Gov. Davis himself was connected manus for the debut objection of the Truck Stopping Device connected Nov. 18, 2001. Oh, the Truck Stopping Device worked, alright – astatine slightest successful the bare parking batch of the Oakland Coliseum. A road patrol car tapped the backmost of a tanker truck, which came to a precise civilized stop. Some radical were amazed. Some were stunned. Others thought California authorities authorities and the road patrol had mislaid their marbles.

A vast, bare parking batch was 1 thing. Public streets and highways were thing else. What if it happens astatine precocious velocity and the truck, uncontrollable with its wheels locked, skidded into a deadly crash. What if the motortruck operator – presumably a violent who stole oregon hijacked the motortruck – tried to evade a California Highway Patrol bump by rapidly changing lanes, swinging the trailer violently backmost and distant and shoving guiltless drivers disconnected the road? What if CHP bumped the incorrect tanker motortruck causing a clang and detonation – conscionable similar the 1 they were trying to prevent?

Or possibly a motortruck is doing what it was expected to bash and the car that deed it from down was not a road patrol serviceman but a ma who looked distant astatine conscionable the incorrect instant. Now determination would beryllium a substance tanker with locked-up wheels blocking the thoroughfare astatine the worst imaginable time. Is determination immoderate different clip for a postulation blockage?

Almost precisely 2 years later, successful 2003, Gov. Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It should person happened that time astatine the Oakland Coliseum.

It turned retired Dick Simon Trucking had been warned not to prosecute Mike Bowers, who had a grounds of transgression and intelligence illness.

They hired him anyhow (there was a alleged operator shortage past too). Not surprisingly, the authorities of California sued for damages to the capitol building, and successful 2002 Dick Simon Trucking declared bankruptcy. The institution was acquired by Central Refrigerated Lines.

In 2004, the Simon household started a caller institution called Simon Transport. In a timeline connected its website, Simon Transport traces its beginnings backmost to Dick Simon Trucking successful 1955, but for 2001 connected the timeline, determination is nothing.

No, I don’t expect a timeline introduction that says “A atrocious prosecute attacked the California capitol gathering with a truckload of evaporated milk.” I’m conscionable sayin’…

And I’m surely not maligning the men and women of California Highway Patrol. They bash a demanding, indispensable job, and their predecessors 20 years agone astir apt had small oregon thing to bash with the Truck Stopping Device. Hell, they’d beryllium the ones required to pursuit and tally into a rolling bomb.

No, it had to beryllium the precocious echelons of California Highway Patrol command, precursors of the folks who present privation ELDs successful California trucks that ne'er permission the state.

Are ELDs adjacent remotely comparable to the Truck Stopping Device? Of people not.

Except possibly successful 1 regard: they’re some atrocious ideas. LL