A Poinciana woman dies in a car vs tractor trailer accident

A 49 year old Poinciana woman has died as a result of a Tractor trailer vs car accident. It is unrelated to I-4 conditions. Rosemita Lauriston of 2150 Mystic Ring Loop died about 7 a.m. today when she drove her Maroon Nisan Sentra into the back of a Florida Rock Industries tractor/trailer truck on Hatchineha Road, near Tyner Road, said Polk Sheriff's Office spokesman Scott Wilder.

Both the truck, driven by 59-year-old Kenneth McPhail of Bartow, and Laurison were driving west bound. There was fog in the area at the time the crash occurred.

Traffic homicide detectives are investigating the crash.

One Man dies in tractor trailer rollover

One passenger in a tractor trailer rollover has died, near Lake of The Woods area in Canada Tuesday night. Two Kenora police officers came upon the accident about 10:30 pm. The tractor trailer apparently went off the roadway into a ditch and ended up on it's top. The accident happened at the Hiway 17 and Hiway 71 junction. The two men were trapped inside and rescued by ambulance and fire personell and transfered to the hospital. One occupant died as a result of the injuries sustained, the other remains in the hospital with serious injuries.

Tractor-trailer accident closes portion of Route 12

A portion of southbound Route 12 near Route 8 was closed Wednesday after the wind blew over a tractor-trailer full of logs, police said. The state Department of Environmental Conservation was notified of the accident around 9 a.m., but dispatchers said they were unaware of any injuries.

The roadway was closed for a while. Source

Three killed in accident near Freer

Three people died about 11 a.m. Tuesday in a burning van after it struck an 18-wheeler 14 miles north of Freer, police said. Pasadena residents Maria Consuelo Sanchez, 59, Maria Delcarmen Guardiolla, 49, and Juan Guardiolla, 70, were unable to escape the green 2001 Plymouth van as it was engulfed in flames, according to Department of Public Safety reports.

The van was traveling south on U.S. Highway 59 when it veered into the northbound lane colliding with a 2003 Kenworth tractor trailer driven by Mark Zetterstrom. Zetterstrom was not injured, police said.

An identification card was found inside the van that allowed police to contact family of the deceased, according to reports. Justice of the Peace Ben Garza pronounced the three occupants dead at the scene. Source

So you think truck driving is easy?

I know all of you, whether in the USA or not have seen truck drivers.
They are what make the world go around. If it were not for a truck driver, driving all night and day then people would not have anything.
I hear people all the time, laugh and make jokes about truck drivers. But until you have been in a truck drivers shoes, and done a 1/10 of what he or she has done then you need not make any jokes.

Yea, I know the requirements to become a truck driver are not much. All you need to do is be able to speak English, read English, and be able to write in the USA.
Also you must not have a felony record, or be mental.
Training going through truck driving school is easy enough, it only takes 3 weeks, and you are almost guaranteed a CDL license.
It gets very hard after you go through school,believe me. I have heard people say, "But all you do is sit behind the wheel and drive, how hard is that"?

Well let's see here...

You have finally made it through school, and now have been hired with a company.
You report to the company for orientation which will last for up to 5 days, and most company's will only give you maybe $25.00 per day for this. Some company's won't even do this.
Of course the feed you lunch, and put you in a cheap motel, and provide you with a van to take you to the terminal and back to the motel.

The next 5 days you are drilled about company policies, DOT policies, securing your loads, doing the paper work for your company and the DOT. Plus you must within these 5 days also get a physical and DOT drug screen.

Let's say you are lucky enough to get through this part of it.
Now you are officially a hired employee. Guess what?

Nope you are not officially hired, you are a trainee for a prospective company.
This means you get to go out with a driver trainer for as long as he or she thinks you need to go out with them.
Basically you will do all the driving, and do all the paperwork. While the driver trainer sits over in the passenger seat and makes a bookoo of money.

That's right he or she will make allot of money, you will not.
Ok so now you are paired up with a trainer, usually this guy or gal is coming off a break at the house, so he or she is usually running as late as possible.
Trying to get that very last minute with the family.

So you are stuck either waiting at the terminal for he or she to show up, because the company has had you to check out of the cheap motel already.

Well the trainer finally shows up, now when the trainer arrives you learn there is a problem with their truck.
So the trainer reports it to the mechanics, they begin to work on it. You in the mean time are still waiting to get moved into the truck, with all your thing's stacked up around you.
No place to take a nap or sleep as you have been up all day so you are still waiting.

Finally about 4 hours later the truck is finished, now you can finally move your stuff in it.
Guess what? The trainer also has his or her stuff as well. Will it all fit? Yea, but it does not leave much room.

By now it is 2:00 AM in the morning. Do you think you and your trainer is going to pull out of the terminal and go to a truck stop and go to bed?

Nope they got themselves a load that picks up at 6:00 AM.
The trainer will go to bed after they see you drive down the road.

Now you arrive at your pick up point, you wake the trainer up and you proceed to check in with security.

You get to the security office and your trainer has been here a thousand times, but you have not.
Security will make you go through their little check in process, filling out your name, getting a name tag, watching a film,etc.

You get through this process it is now 7:00 am. Remember your load was supposed to be picked up at 6:00 am. You are now 1 hour into your run, and you are not even loaded yet.

Security directs you to the shipping office, you go in there and give them a pick up number, guess what?

It is the wrong number, so now you get to go call your dispatcher, usually there is a phone located in the break room clear on the other side of the building. Yea, I know allot of you have cell phones. Well cell phones are not permitted into allot of places.

You and your trainer walk to the phone, you dial the dispatchers number, and you hold.
Your dispatcher might have to handle 20 or 30 drivers, if they all got the same problem as you well you will be on the phone for a while.

45 minutes later they answer takes them a couple of seconds to give you the right number because maybe all they missed it was by a number.
By the time you walk back to the shipping office it is now 8:00 am or after.

You give the new pick up number, and it works but since you are 2 hours late to pick up, now they will have to try to squeeze you into their loading time.

So you go to your truck and wait until they call you on the CB radio.
Guess what? You have still not gotten to go to bed, you have to sit up in the seat and wait for them to call you.

Finally after about 4 or 5 trucks all of which pulled in behind you get loaded, they call you to park in a loading dock.
Guess what?

Your load is not ready, they tell you to go to sleep and they will wake you when they are finished.

5 hours later they wake you, you are loaded. You sign the paper work and you are off.

Oh yea, you did not get paid anything while you set there from 6:00 am till 1:00 pm.

Now you get to go find a scale to scale your load to make it legal to go down the road. You get to a truck stop, and you get to scale the load out before you can get fuel. If you got fuel first you may not be able to scale the load for legal.

You scale the load, and then you can get fuel..this may take a couple hours depending where you are at.

You have gotten 5 hours of restless sleep, after being up all night and all day the day before.

You can still drive because you are legal to drive for 11 hours. You have only driven 5 hours so far up to scaling the load out to legal.

Now you have finished fueling and now you prepare to start off on your journey.
Get your map out,do your log book and take off.

You can legally drive for 6 more hours, so the trainer has you to head out.
You finally reach your destination, 5.5 hours later your eyes feel like sand paper from lack of sleep, hunger,and you smell from lack of a shower for 2 days.

You basically have to do the same thing when delivering as you did when you had to pick the load up. Check in with security, after there 15 or 20 minute safety chat then you head up to the receiving office, only to find out because you were so late getting there that you must wait.

So again you sit and wait for someone to hollar at you on the CB radio. It may be a few hours, then you finally get to back into a unloading dock.

Now is when the fun begins, you get deal with the dock supervisor who is a real PITA, he has been at work all day and is real frustrated. So for fun he says this load must be palletized of great!

This means that you must go inside the trailer and breakdown the pallets because they are maybe one layer too tall.

Or you can hire a lumper to do it for you, most companies will pay for this as long as you get it authorized first.

Well after 5 or 6 more hours you finally get your load unloaded.
This is probably 12:00 midnight by now and going on 3 days with no sleep,no eat,no shower, and guess what you still have a half hour of driving left to hopefully get into a truck stop and parked.

So off you go, trainer says there is a truck stop up the road a ways head it for there.

Only to pull into it and the lot is almost completely full. You finally find a parking place and get parked, now it is close to 1:00 AM you have to have a shower, get something to eat and try to get some rest.
You are on your first 10 hour break.

Welcome to truck driving buddy, this has been your first load of many to look forward too.

In all reality it is probably not as bad as I described it, but it is not a walk in the park either.

So give them trucker's a break next time one accidentally drifts into your lane, he or she may have been up driving for a long time without rest.

Parts of Interstate 4 Closed in Polk County

Smoke from an out-of-control brush fire near State Road 33 in Polk County has forced officials to close a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 4 from the Polk Parkway to U.S. 27 near Davenport. Tolls have been suspended in both directions on the Polk Parkway until noon, when Florida Highway Patrol officials will review the situation again.

The Florida Highway Patrol, the Polk County Sheriff's Office and several other agencies are working a 50-vehicle accident in the area, according to various spokespeople. That number includes six cars that are completely burned and 20 tractor trailers, including two that are on fire.

At least three people have died and six have been transported two local hospitals. At least two people were still trapped at 8:30 a.m.

"This visibility situation has been a huge impediment. It’s a tragic situation. So many vehicles involved," said Polk County spokeswoman Cindy Rodriguez. She said they got the first call about 5:45 a.m.

Many things are coming together to make the situation worse, Rodriguez said, including people going to school or work. The closing of I-4 will be an inconvenience throughout the day, she said.

No one knows when the interstate will reopen.

Trooper Larry Coggins of the FHP said troopers are literally walking along the interstate trying to locate accidents because of thick smoke and fog.

Emergency officials said in an interview on Bay News 9 that they have located some accident victims only after hearing them scream.

Two school buses are being used to evacuate people who do not need immediate medical attention.

Visibility is extremely limited because of the smoke from the brush fires in the area. The brushfire began Tuesday as a controlled burn by Fish and Wildlife. But because of the dry condition from drought and recent cold temperatures, the fire quickly got out of control. It went from a 280-acre controlled burn on Tuesday to 430 acres now, Rodriguez said.

Others have said more than 700 acres have burned, including some acres burned as firefighters tried to control the first out-of-control burn.

The fire continues to burn north of the interstate near SR 557. Some of the fire is in the Green Swamp area, which is of particular concern to the Florida Division of Forestry because of extremely low water levels.

Motorists should anticipate alternate routes. Eastbound travelers on I-4 can leave the interstate at Lakeland and follow U.S. 92 east to U.S. 27, then north to the interstate. However, 92 and 27 are clogged at the moment.

Those who are on U.S. 27 can go to U.S. 17, then take 540 into Lakeland.

Smoky conditions are expected to remain for several days. Source

Lawsuit not grief binds families mourning two killed in crash

She lost her husband. He lost his nephew.

But it was not a shared grief that bound them Tuesday. It was a lawsuit.

Kim Shelton, an Alabama woman whose husband was killed in a fiery Interstate 75 crash in Campbell County, is trying to convince a U.S. District Court jury this week that Kentucky businessman Gary Day, whose nephew died in the same explosive collision, should be held responsible for the fatal August 2005 accident.Shelton's husband, Wade J. Shelton, 38, of Albertville, Ala., died when his 2005 Freightliner tractor-trailer loaded with plastics was struck by an out-of-control 2004 International rig loaded with grain driven by Day's nephew, Edgar Holmes Jr., 52, of Columbia, Ky.

The two rigs, headed in opposite directions, collided at respective speeds of more than 50 mph. Holmes' truck, owned by Day and his trucking company, slammed into Shelton's truck just behind the cab where fuel tanks are located, causing a massive explosion. Both men died.

On those facts, there is no dispute.

Neither side in this courtroom battle presided over by U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan disagrees that it was a lathe chuck - a massive 220-plus pound machine tool - that somehow wound up in the interstate roadway that led to the fatal crash.

But what pits this pair of grieving survivors against each other is a matter of seconds and a judgment call.

"If (Holmes) had simply applied his brakes and slowed down … we wouldn't be here today," attorney Toby D. Brown told jurors Tuesday in opening statements. "If he had made a right steer, we would not be here today."

"We're here to decide what could have, what should have Mr. Holmes done in three-quarters of a second," Day's attorney, Robert R. Davies, countered. "Was the death of these two gentlemen senseless? Yes. Was it tragic? Yes. Was it Mr. Holmes' fault that lathe chuck rolled out in front of him? Absolutely not."

In this case, that lathe chuck is the star witness, although dueling engineers will try to convince jurors on whose list the machine tool should appear. To understand what it looks like, picture old-school tinker toys. The chuck is a concrete version of the round wooden tinker toy. It was connected to a concrete "spindle," much the same as a skinny wooden peg was inserted into the tinker toy. It is used in various engines.

No one knows how the lathe chuck wound up in the northbound lane of Interstate 75 near mile marker 142 in Campbell County on that August day in 2005. It likely fell from the back of a truck. How long it had been there is hotly debated.

Brown contends the massive concrete wheel and spindle had been in the roadway long enough to come to a rest. Davies insists it had just fallen onto the road and was still rolling when Holmes encountered it.

"He saw it from at least 110 yards," Brown said of Holmes.

According to Brown's expert witnesses, Holmes made a tactical decision to "straddle" the big wheel in the road rather than avoid it, moving four feet to the left to position his rig nearly dead-center over the concrete tool in hopes of driving over it.

Unfortunately, however, the tool's diameter of 15 feet was greater than the axle clearance of just over 10 feet of Holmes' vehicle.

Brown told jurors the impact between the axle and lathe crank destroyed the big rig's steering mechanism. The rig careened across a grassy median and into the northbound lanes, where Shelton desperately began braking his big rig and steering it onto the shoulder of the roadway to avoid the collision, Brown said.

"They have admitted my client was a completely innocent victim," Brown told jurors of Shelton. "He did everything right in braking and moving to the right."

Davies countered that Holmes was just as innocent, responding in a split second to a "sudden emergency."

"After Mr. Holmes struck this item, he lost all control of his vehicle," Brown said. "There was nothing that could be done."

Day is being sued as Holmes' employer, not because he also happened to be the slain trucker's uncle. Shelton's widow is seeking more than $1 million in compensatory damages.

The civil case in U.S. District Court because the accident occurred in Tennessee but those involved were from out of state.

The trial continues today with expert testimony from engineers expected.Source

Missouri bill would mandate English-only CDL tests

A bill in the Missouri House would call for trucker-hopefuls to prove they have a firm grasp of the English language to obtain a commercial driver’s license. It is one of several efforts of interest to truck drivers in the Show-Me State.

Well it is about time, I hope that ALL would join in on this!

New Mexico to join in on the idling issue just like California

Will New Mexico be next? The Associated Press has said that New Mexico is eying the new non idle law that California has just started using, for trucks weighing more than 16001 lbs. Florida, Minnesota and Colorado have also moved to join the band wagon in efforts to lesson the green house effects they say truck idling is harming.

Before you know it trucks will no longer be able to idle anywhere in the USA.

California can Deny drivers based in California Registration if cited for idiling more than 5 minutes

Truck drivers,owners, and companies based in California can be denied registration ,renewals, and transfers if they have been cited idling for more than 5 minutes. California began enforcing Jan. 1 2008 a new idling limit that no longer exempts sleeper-berth time, though it does exempt idling of trucks carrying temperature-dependent loads, performing safety or maintenance checks and “to prevent a health emergency.”

The state can deny registrations, renewals, and transfers until the citation has been cleared.

Karen Caesar, a spokeswoman for the California Air Resources Board has stated that the local police have been giving the authority to write citations for idiling for more than 5 minutes.

This could really hurt truck drivers, owners, and companies if the citation were to fall on or around the same time as their registration does. Because how long will it take for the court to clear it?