Preventable or not?
Ensconced comfortably behind the wheel of his tractor-trailer, John Doe maintained a sedate 25 mph on sun-drenched Main Street in Paducah, Ky., while listening intently to fellow trucker Sidney Dude Goocher's Channel 19 recitation of the Federal Highway Administration's fas-cinatingly inscrutable definition of interstate commerce, which he'd gleefully downloaded the previous evening. Interstate commerce is determined by the essential character of the movement, manifested by the shipper's fixed and persis-tent intent at the time of shipment, and is ascertained from all of the facts and circumstances surrounding the transportation, Goocher read. Y'all got that, Johnny boy? Clear as mud, Dude, Doe responded. Darn! He'd just missed his turn for the delivery at Muffin Warehouse on Ferret Avenue! Hastily concluding his chat with Dude, Doe turned left at the next corner, onto a residential road, only to be faced by an underpass whose clearance was marked 13 feet, 1 inch. Although Doe's trailer stood 13 feet tall, he proceeded under the bridge anyway, albeit with extreme caution, at a snail's pace for several feet before ... SCREECHCHUNK!!! Since Doe contested his safety director's warning letter for a preventable accident (the dumb clearance sign was wrong, right?), the National Safety Council's Accident Review Committee was asked to settle the dis-pute. Alas, NSC upheld the preventable ruling, noting that gambling on a 1-inch clearance was inexcusably foolish. Instead, Doe should have turned around and looked for a safer route. John Doe knew his clearance through the underpass was only one inch, but he proceeded beneath the bridge anyway, albeit with extreme caution. Even so, his trailer made contact and was damaged. Was this a preventable accident? safety Preventable or not: Doe gets red hot under the bridge August 2008 Commercial Carrier Journal 51 Write on Reader Service Card