Preventable or not:
It was a hot, sunny day when trucker John Doe arrived at the Hooters restaurant in Meridian, Miss. Surprising, Doe was less than thrilled to be there, because blindly back-ing his reefer trailer to the rollup door at the restaurant's kitchen area always was a pain and since Doe's bosses were watching his truck's every move via his in-cab com-puter, he knew he couldn't stick around for too long. Anyway, while consoling himself with a mouthful of Spicy Ranch Doritos, Doe's day brightened immensely when he dis-covered that waitresses Bambi Bambooski and Raven Rolzolski would be helping to guide his approach to the kitchen door. Bambooski positioned herself to the right of Doe's cab, while Rolzolski stood beside Doe's window. Doe started to back his rig very slowly, keeping an eye on Rolzolski. Unfortunately, Rolzolski suddenly was distracted by the faint sound of a ringing phone inside the kitchen door, and she stood motionless while waiting to see if someone would answer the call. Meanwhile, Doe backed into the door and bent its frame! Bambooski had been yelling franti-cally, pounding on Doe's trailer and waving in an attempt to make him stop, but Doe's attention had been riveted on Rolzolski. And both of Doe's windows had remained closed to maintain the air-conditioned coolness of his cab, so he heard nothing. Because Doe contested the preventable-accident warning letter from his safety director, the matter was turned over to the National Safety Council's Accident Review Committee for a final decision. NSC upheld the preventable ruling, because Doe should have lowered his windows to listen for verbal warnings, and also kept an eye on Bambooski. John Doe, while backing up to the restaurant's kitchen door with his windows rolled up, couldn't hear any warnings and slammed into the door. Was this a preventable accident? safety Preventable or not: Doe's day not exactly a hoot September 2008 Commercial Carrier Journal 41 Fri Apr 4 15:11:02 PDT 2008 - VERTIS Master-568136 TOYO-07876 Write on Reader Service Card