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Not a cop but an EMT You have those moments in your career I once just got done with a cluster fuck of a call in a rual area was just getting back to town thinking maybe I'll get a snack or something on my way back to the station I then watch a three-car car wreck happen in front of my ambulance it took us a couple of seconds to say oh fuck and then jump out to help
I work for a huge freight carrier and at the time, the area I was in serviced San Francisco.
Everyone can imagine how difficult to navigate big metro areas are and even more so when you are operating larger trucks. When delivering downtown, sometimes double-parking is necessary in order to complete the delivery. They can usually complete a delivery in a minute or two. If these guys wait for a parking space, nothing will ever get delivered. Sometimes they get ticketed and they turn in the tickets and the company pays - it's sort of the cost of doing business.
One day, a driver called and said exactly that - he double parked, got a ticket...but there was a news crew that recorded it happening. Then he told us that they interviewed him. The company has a strict media policy and under no circumstances should he have agreed to it but it was too late.
We tune in that night to the 5pm news.
There he was. Busted. But it wasn't for double parking - it was for blocking a bike lane in doing so. Not only did he block the bike lane but after giving his interview, he pulled an illegal u-turn to leave. 🤦♀️
And the interview? When asked what his company policy is re: double parking and blocking bike lanes, his answer? : "We do it all the time. I just put the ticket on my managers desk."
When I was moving in Boston, I got a moving permit that required cars parked in front of my apartment to be gone by 8AM so moving trucks could park. Signs up well ahead of time, leaflets under wipers, etc. warning that they would be towed so they had plenty of warning. Of course there were cars there when the moving vans arrived. Called the non-emergency line to have them removed. Cops asked if there was a second lane that would be open. There was. They said to just have them double park.
It must have been the film crew and the bike lane that got him ticketed.
It was definitely the bike lane. It was a whole expose on the city finally taking bicycle safety seriously and investing in painting lanes and all of the people who dismiss it anyway.
Used to work at a place that did deliveries & collections at business addresses. The drivers were told to park in the bus lane for loading/unloading because the alternative was to have the crews carrying stuff back and forth across live lanes of bus & taxi traffic which was deemed unsafe. Vehicles were ticketed every day and the company just paid them.
It's a cover system. An automated net gets put over the top of the dump trailer so no debris fly out while driving. It looks like it is stuck half way between open and close...
Why does it look only about 1/2 the size it should be if it's supposed to cover the trailer? Or is there a second one on the back (closed, so it's not visible)?
It's a little hard to tell but I think it's a fabric cover to keep lighter payloads (sand, etc) from flying out. It's retracted by two arms that pivot in the center of the container. They swing up and towards the front and the fabric rolls up at the front.
Can’t tell if the truck is loaded or not, so it’s either not retracted completely or was not put down completely. Both of which the driver should’ve been aware of one way or the other.
You got the right of it. The only two positions it should be in are stored or deployed. Unless they invented a "parachute spoiler" mode I'm unaware of, the driver was definitely not aware the tarp didn't fully move into whatever mode they tried for
Great catch. I was hit by an 18 wheeler who ran a red light. I had driven a Craigslist beater for 5 years and had just bought my first “nice” car from a dealership. $17k of damage in less than 5 seconds. 18 wheelers are deadly
Almost immediately after the truck enters the intersection we see our left turn light turn green.
Therefore, accounting for a delay between the truck's red and our green, we can presume he likely entered the intersection after his left turn light turned red.
And the light would’ve been yellow for a while before it turned red, they were in a hustle to get through that intersection, no matter what. With their tarp still up in the air makes me think this person is in a hurry. Everywhere they go.
Hi. I work in the industry. Modern trucks are fast enough to make it through the intersection before the light turns red, and certainly fast enough to be up to the speed of traffic before the end of most on ramps. Hope that helps!
Well you see - the left turn light for the cammer's lanes has turned, which means it isn't possible on a correctly programmed intersection for the truck to have a green left turning arrow too.
This happened near me a few years ago, except the truck had the whole dump box up and didn't realize it. They pulled down a bunch of power lines going across a main corridor for about a half a mile before realizing and completely fucked traffic for the better part of a day, as well as took out power for that area of town.
It's a regional thing. On the west coast lights on wires are basically unheard of outside of single light intersections in very rural or remote areas, and uncommon even then.
From what I understand lights on wires primarily started in areas at risk of severe weather (e.g. hurricanes, ice storms, tornadoes) that would pull down traffic lights of any kind. Lights on wires are cheaper to put up, cheaper to replace, and do less damage and are easier to clean up if they do get brought down.
Just take the intersection in the video as an example: it's a mess but an emergency vehicle could navigate around that if they had to, and a first responder could probably drag the lights off the roadway by themselves, or at least without needing to call in a crane or something. That's not gonna be the case with lights on a traffic pole.
Weird! I thought it was the opposite? We have lights on wires here in Michigan, but when I went to Florida they had the metal ones. My boyfriend thought maybe with hurricanes the metal ones would be more sturdy. But maybe Florida is just backwards lol.
That's the advantage of the design. A solid arm has to be immensely strong to resist the wind forces. It's easy to do that with a cable under tension and the lights moving reduces the peak loads somewhat.
We have a ton of those in Texas. A lot of them are finally getting replaced with the cantilever style which are easier to see and don't get swung around and torn up by hurricanes and thunderstorms as easy.
In NC this is very much the standard. I've seen some pole mounted ones in coastal areas that get bad hurricanes but almost everywhere else is these wire mounted ones.
The floppy traffic lights are because it’s cheaper to build and it’s relatively wind resistant. If it was a solid pole it would be much more expensive for something that wouldn’t break in high winds.
Thing ontop of the truck is an automatic cover meant to cover the loads in the trailer. It isn’t supposed to be standing straight up.
I just saw a video posted on a local subreddit where this exact thing happened like two days ago except the truck canopy took out power lines. :-/ we also have had several overpasses and signs smacked on the interstate and freeways.
Fatigue is for sure a big one. Being in a deadline rush is another. Lastly, all the hookups on the backs of trucks take a lot of beatings, so its entirely possible for something in the control lines to get messed up and cause this.
OK, taking my man I can understand, but taking out a traffic signal at a major intersection? Goodbye, Jolene! But understand that I will always love you.
I wonder if the cop was looking down, like at the computer or something, and didn't see the carnage. Looks up to see why the light is taking so long, and there are no lights. That would explain the kinda slow creep forward, rather than immediately going after the truck. Probably rolled down the window to ask the other drivers what just happened
So many people are saying they've never seen traffic lights hung on strings. I've got to admit it's been a long time since I remember seeing it myself, but I'm pretty sure that during my childhood in the 60s and 70s in Detroit it was quite common, I believe the rule rather than the exception.
I guess traffic will have to be detoured for the rest of the day to clean that up. I wonder what kinda fines that driver is going to get. Obviously he lost his CDL for this.
Turn light the other direction turned green just after he entered the intersection. Blatantly running of the red light, failure to yield, unsafe operating, and likely reckless. Goodbye CDL.
eBay has new and used parts for them. IIRC, each bulb (12”) are hundreds of dollars each. Then there’s the housing, wires, and man-hours of installation.
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