Semi Trucks

A garbage truck leaked oil for two miles  while driving up Alabama Hill to the Silver Beach area near Lake Whatcom, but a city official said environmental damage will be minimal.

About half the affected area is within the lake’s watershed, said Scott Brown-Davis, storm water maintenance supervisor for the city Public Works department.

He said, however, that the possibility of the engine oil leaking into the drainage system is small, since crews were quick to cover drains with absorbent pads and most of the oil would run off to the shoulder of the roads anyway.

A 100-gallon gasoline spill in Queens afternoon caused some traffic troubles in the borough.

A fuel truck overturned at the Northern Boulevard off ramp of the southbound Whitestone Expressway, closing the off ramp.

Only a fraction of the contents of the 5,000-gallon truck spilled on to the street. The Department of Environmental Conservation says some of the fuel seeped into the top soil but there is no evidence the spill contaminated Flushing Creek.

The driver of the truck was hospitalized with minor injuries.

 
A suspected drunk driver was hauled in by police on Albuquerque’s West Side this morning, but not before a chaotic chase.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department said it started when deputies tried to pull over a white truck that was swerving all over the road near Bridge and Paulette.

The driver pulled over and took off on foot, but then got back into his truck and drove off.

A deputy followed the man down Sage to Old Coors.

The suspect’s vehicle came to a stop after running a red light and hitting another car at the intersection.

A serious late afternoon crash Monday landed the driver of a truck in the hospital after it slammed into two utility poles and ejected him from the vehicle.

Vittie Thomas, reportedly in his 70s, was behind the wheel of his maroon Chevy F-10 truck yesterday and travelling east on East Sunrise Highway in the area of Chesapeake when the accident occurred.

Reports say Thomas was first spotted by a motorist pulling up on the scene who telephone for help.

The truck was badly damaged on the left front side, one of the street poles was snapped close to the base and the cab of the truck was upside down on the side of the road.

One in every three trucks in the country is overloaded and they are to blame for 50 per cent of road accidents, surveys by the Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training have found.

Around three-fourths of the annual Rs 550 billion loss from road accidents was attributed to the unorganised truck transport industry. The foundation said over 92,500 people were killed each year in road accidents in the country coming under the wheels of the overloaded vehicles. Delhi leads the metro casualty count.

Most trucks were found overloaded by 25-50 per cent.

Senior fellow and coordinator of the foundation, S.P. Singh, said: “When a truck is overloaded by 10 per cent, its steering and brake control is reduced by 50 and 40 per cent, respectively. Overloading also reduces the productive life of the road by 80 per cent and the productive life of the truck by 30 per cent.”

he reckless homicide trial of a driver in a 2003 tollway crash has included descriptions of the moments before and after a semitrailer hit a 25-passenger tour bus.

Vincente Zepeda of Chicago is on trial this week in the deaths of 8 members of a women’s club. The crash also injured 15.

The women were returning from an outing to a Japanese gardens when Zepeda’s semitrailer struck the small tour bus from behind.

Bus passenger Ana Manglano says she noticed traffic slowing around them and looked up at the driver when there was “a terrible impact.”

A friend who had been sitting just in front Manglano, Ce Ellis of Chicago, died in the crash. She says Ellis ended up on top of her, her head on Manglano’s shoulder.

Zepeda’s attorney says his client may not have stopped quickly enough, but his conduct wasn’t criminal.

They scoured the city’s side streets, often scooping up cars that appeared to be disabled and less likely to be missed — at least not right away.

That would give the 13 tow truck drivers and their accomplices, now sitting in Cook County jail on car theft charges, enough time to pull out the catalytic converters, batteries, wheels and any other items that, sold individually, could bring in decent cash, Chicago Police allege.

Then, with the vehicle nearly stripped, the thieves would puncture a hole in the gas tank and let it drain out as the vehicle was ferried to a scrapyard for the big sale, authorities say.