Truck Crash in Chinatown
This happened Monday, June 23, 2008 in the Chinatown section of Manhattan.
A dump truck coming down the off-ramp from the Manhattan Bridge lost control, and slammed into the back of a parked bus, which was loading passengers at the time. The truck driver said the brakes failed. One person was killed, and 3 injured.
The truck was operated by CPQ Freight Systems from South Kearny, NJ. A look at their Safestat records shows they have had 6 trucks placed Out of Service (OOS) for maintenance defects out of 12 checked in the past 30 months. That is a 50% OOS rate, which is pretty poor. In addition to the brakes failing, investigators observed that the truck may have been over-loaded.
That’s the thing about heavy truck brakes which are not properly adjusted. The truck may stop just fine while its empty. It may even stop while loaded. But you couple an overloaded truck, going too fast, with brakes in less-satisfactory condition…. well, it’s not going to stop. Not in time, anyway. It is important that motor carriers make sure the brakes on their trucks are adjusted on a regular basis. If the truck undergoes heavy loads, with lots of stop-start driving, that means once a week, or even more often. The fact is, trucks are required to be in proper working condition at all times, to prevent this type of wreck.
