Ashley Chapman died in 2023 at a red light with 6 other vehicles. Decision makers moved on. Richard Wright was sentanced to three years. The Executives went elsewhere. The owners sold & retired.
nowhere this dangerous to life but as a consultant I have observed millions (potentially tens of millions) of dollars in losses due to flaws during development of financially-centered software...
...and been fired off projects for reporting those deep, deep flaws
The trouble is, drowsy drivers think they can fight it off. I used to do it, and luckily never caused a crash. Now I refuse to drive if there's any chance I'm drowsy. If my wife is driving, I'm constantly checking to make sure she's wide awake.
I followed a guy on I-40 in NC one time. He was in a work van. Every so often he would drift to the right. After a couple of times the drift was further.
I started honking like crazy and he’d jerk back on the road.
Eventually he drifted off and into the trees. He missed them all and stopped the van. Several cars stopped. He was ok.
The Highway Patrol came. Asked what happened.
He didn’t know.
We said he fell asleep.
He vehemently denied it.
HP didn’t ask any further of witnesses.
The rest of us got back on the road to our destinations.
I’m guessing someone managed a cell connection that got the HP there that quick.
if you are looking for a sponsor contact life insurance providers
ask 'em how many of those 50,000+ deaths were customers with million dollar policies
if _only_ one in fifty, that's a gigabuck of preventable deaths and thus preventable payouts
pointing to Ashley Chapman as an example, if she had been insured for a megabuck, then life insurance providers ought be suing everyone connected to this traffic wreck (never ever ought we call it a traffic accident)
offer up other wallet threatening statistics...
Total Market Size: There are over 134 million individual life insurance policies in force across the United States
1,374,720 lawyers; 1,080,893 licensed physicians; 100,000 CXOs (10 high ranking CXOs per each of 10,000 largest corporations)
assumption of at least five megabucks per life of each of these high income earners
more than 11,000,000,000 dollars exposed to traffic wrecks
The problem you describe is caused by our multimodal transportation system. This system was developed to save money. Saving money is involved at every link in the chain of causation. Saving lives is a distant second in terms of traffic regulations.
The reason air accident reports take so long to arrive is the investigation looks at all the angles and all the evidence, and will typically make over a hundred recommendations. Nobody quibbles because everyone in the industry has a stake and takes notice. So where are the recommendations to improve collision warning systems and add assistive braking? My car has that, and trucks had ABS long before cars did.
In training at the last company I worked for, we watched the dash cam of a fellow DWT, driving whilst texting. He looked up 1.3 seconds before his 80,000 pound rock plowed into the back of the car in front of him. At full speed. He didn’t even have reaction time to hit the brakes.
There were fatalities, but not in the truck.
The video was presented by the driver, who was in prison for a very long time. He wanted to show the rest of us.
The lane changes determined only who was impacted. Possibly the pickup is large enough that the driver only have been seriously injured but I doubt it.
Apart from that, your analysis is correct. This really needs change. Piece work when source and/or destination have limited hours is just asking for trouble.
nowhere this dangerous to life but as a consultant I have observed millions (potentially tens of millions) of dollars in losses due to flaws during development of financially-centered software...
...and been fired off projects for reporting those deep, deep flaws
Every catastrophic event is a series of individual meaningless events that occur in alignment.
Lots of blame in this one.
The trouble is, drowsy drivers think they can fight it off. I used to do it, and luckily never caused a crash. Now I refuse to drive if there's any chance I'm drowsy. If my wife is driving, I'm constantly checking to make sure she's wide awake.
I followed a guy on I-40 in NC one time. He was in a work van. Every so often he would drift to the right. After a couple of times the drift was further.
I started honking like crazy and he’d jerk back on the road.
Eventually he drifted off and into the trees. He missed them all and stopped the van. Several cars stopped. He was ok.
The Highway Patrol came. Asked what happened.
He didn’t know.
We said he fell asleep.
He vehemently denied it.
HP didn’t ask any further of witnesses.
The rest of us got back on the road to our destinations.
I’m guessing someone managed a cell connection that got the HP there that quick.
It was a long time ago.
SUGGEST
if you are looking for a sponsor contact life insurance providers
ask 'em how many of those 50,000+ deaths were customers with million dollar policies
if _only_ one in fifty, that's a gigabuck of preventable deaths and thus preventable payouts
pointing to Ashley Chapman as an example, if she had been insured for a megabuck, then life insurance providers ought be suing everyone connected to this traffic wreck (never ever ought we call it a traffic accident)
offer up other wallet threatening statistics...
Total Market Size: There are over 134 million individual life insurance policies in force across the United States
1,374,720 lawyers; 1,080,893 licensed physicians; 100,000 CXOs (10 high ranking CXOs per each of 10,000 largest corporations)
assumption of at least five megabucks per life of each of these high income earners
more than 11,000,000,000 dollars exposed to traffic wrecks
"The owners sold & retired."
Because of course they did.
Probably did an asset sale so the liabilities were left in a shell of a company. Baztards.
"a four-to-five-second microsleep carries a vehicle the length of a football field with nobody at the controls." That says it all for me. Terrifying.
The problem you describe is caused by our multimodal transportation system. This system was developed to save money. Saving money is involved at every link in the chain of causation. Saving lives is a distant second in terms of traffic regulations.
The reason air accident reports take so long to arrive is the investigation looks at all the angles and all the evidence, and will typically make over a hundred recommendations. Nobody quibbles because everyone in the industry has a stake and takes notice. So where are the recommendations to improve collision warning systems and add assistive braking? My car has that, and trucks had ABS long before cars did.
Self-driving trucks can't come fast enough.
More and more of these shady trucking companies are on the roads nowadays
In training at the last company I worked for, we watched the dash cam of a fellow DWT, driving whilst texting. He looked up 1.3 seconds before his 80,000 pound rock plowed into the back of the car in front of him. At full speed. He didn’t even have reaction time to hit the brakes.
There were fatalities, but not in the truck.
The video was presented by the driver, who was in prison for a very long time. He wanted to show the rest of us.
So sorry this happened. I think we all know the issue of falling asleep while driving even extremely short distances.
And then you add in the issue of drivers not understanding English so they can't read the signs and it's a catastrophe!
Sad but mad.
The lane changes determined only who was impacted. Possibly the pickup is large enough that the driver only have been seriously injured but I doubt it.
Apart from that, your analysis is correct. This really needs change. Piece work when source and/or destination have limited hours is just asking for trouble.
Lane changes are routine so they in no way played a part in causing the crash they like you said only change who was impacted.
TYPO = sentanced
SUGGEST = sentenced
Powerful! Great writing, tragic subject …