Tree company causes accident.

[treemann]

In our area on Tuesday the boss of a tree company in our area pulled out onto the highway and his employee followed him without looking. There was a semitractor towing a dump trailer with a full load of clay. The semi slammed on the brakes and swerved in an attempt to avoid an accident with the pick up truck that was towing a chipper. The semi truck jack kniffed and hit the chipper. Then he ended up in the oncoming lanes and hit a pick-up truck head on and killed the two people in it. No one else was injured. The drivers of the semi and pick-up towing the chipper tested negative for alchohol but drug tests are still pending.

 

[Phil]

I wonder if the employee was new to the area or not. Everyone who drives a truck in our company gets a map to all the jobs we are going to that day (99% of the time that is). The other one percent the crew leader or boss just says follow me to the next job. If you get seperated in traffic and your radios suck or are non existent, you tend to sacrifice safe driving practices to keep up with the truck infront of you. It is extremely unfortunate that innocents...or anyone for that matter died. Rushing never never solves any problems. Drive safe

-Phil

 

[Demo]

/forum/images/graemlins/furious3.gif Im lucky if I get to no where Im going. This is not rare the Foreman supervisor or whatever the hell he is tells the guy just follow me. So you follow then you hit a traffic light now your behind an need to catch up. I have to catch myself from doing the exact same thing. And you no what sometimes I dont get to the jobsite, untill someone calls me on the radio and tells me where I'm going. This all stopped on day when I asked whats on the schedule for the day? the reply was painting house. So I loaded up my truck with brushes and cans instead of saws and gas. When we got to the job site and he asked for the 020 I handed him a small paint brush and some red paint. I almost got fired but he learned.

 

[Colin]

I've seen a lot of dangerous stuff go on with the "Follow me" mentality, especially when there are more that two vehicles involved.

It's a shame to hear about the deaths.

 

[tophopper]

The follow me thing works only if you have means of communication. Expect to get seperated, and deal with it rationally. I too have seen some close calls from a convey of vehicles trying to not get seperated.

Better yet.... give me the address,,, I'll meet ya there!

 

[TreeCo]

It is dangerous trying to convoy with multiple vehicles. Another dangerous thing I've caught the guys doing is taking different routes back to the shop racing each other.