Current truckers and social media users are issuing their support for Aguilera-Mederos, alleging his punishment is too severe.13 to 110 year in prison after he caused a huge crash that killed four people on a Colorado interstate in April 2019 More than 4.4 million people have signed a petition for clemency or commutation for ex-trucker Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 26.Polis indicates he will examine any appeal application This is entirely unpredictable and unstoppable.Petition to grant clemency to Colorado trucker, 26, jailed for 110 years after killing four in fireball after his brakes failed reaches 4.4m signatures: Gov. Then, as far as faulty devices go, I'm referring to something that is outside of human control, something malfunctioning suddenly.
In most places, truck speed limits are lower than car limits, and going faster than that limit (as most truck drivers do) cause cause brakes to be used too much and overheat and malfunction.Īnd, as mentioned in another comment, on steep declines, we should be using our brakes very infrequently, trucks are equipped with some sort of engine or exhaust braking system that allows us to slow the truck without using the brake pads, but this system requires you to go slow and use a low gear during steep declines. If something is outside of the allowable specs, we are required to fix it before we drive. If your brake pads are ever too worn to work properly, a driver should be aware of this, we are required to inspect the vehicle every day before we drive it. The kinds of errors that drivers can make range from not inspecting our vehicles well enough, not maintaining our vehicles often enough, driving too fast in general or driving too fast in extreme conditions, and not using proper techniques when driving. It's a wide range of things that a driver can do wrong that can lead to brakes failing, most of these are caused by bad driving habits and can be addressed and corrected, but only on an individual basis. Pretty much most of the instances of brake failure are either going to be one of 2 things: driver error or faulty devices.ĭriver error can, obviously, be corrected, but there isn't necessarily one error that we can address to fix any instances. However brakes in the truck need to match the brakes in the trailer, and since in Europe one truck usually stays with one trailer, it was easier to make the switch than USA where one truck is with a different trailer almost every day. USA should really switch to disk brakes like Europe has. (This hasn't really been an issue since the 50s/60s). They will be engine braking on the way down, if they miss a shift and the truck starts picking up speed the brakes may not have the strength to slow the truck again. This is mostly an issue on off road logging trucks. Since most drivers are pulling a different trailer every day, some tend to get lazy and not check the brakes and the get a trailer with poorly adjusted brakes and then have a failure.Īnother issue is the brakes simply may not be strong enough to stop the truck.
If the slack isn't adjusted correctly, the shoes won't touch the drums and you'll get no braking action. This means as the brake pads wear you need to crawl under the truck and trailer and adjust the slack in the brakes. Many large trucks in USA (more often the trailer than the truck, most trucks now use self adjusting brakes) use manually adjusted brakes.