Yes, I’m the same, just no little one to my side.
Nonetheless, I’d rather have people being stupid, reckless and have accidents behind the wheel, than having someone with serious intent to kill/hurt someone or a group of people.
What are the chances of being a victim of a terrorist attack? Extremely low. What are the chances of being involved in a traffic accident in Taiwan? Well, I’ve been in several, so…
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I don’t think this needs to be an either/or situation.
The video from Yangmingshan linked above is brutal. I can’t imagine any defensive driving maneuver that could have saved the folks on the receiving end.
Guy
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Damn. That looks like straight out of a movie.
Anyone know what the repercussion will be for the driver? I drive to Hsinchu once a week and these buses zoom in and out of the lanes like they were in a type r.
It really grinds my f*cking gears when people write ‘break’ instead of ‘brake’
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In this awful case, it was too much of the former, and too little of the latter.
Guy
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Yeah, I’m wondering if the truckie had had proper driving instruction he may have had the nous to crunch his way down through the gears and slam on his handbrake.
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If you think about what could have been with a little more time and a bit less rush/lack of sleep/overwork/mind numbing/less cost cutting… Trying to stop a normal car without brakes is hard enough, imagine a heavy as hell cement truck. How could this been avoided? Better brakes, maintenance for straters, maybe some training, hopefully some experience and quick, cool mind from the driver, but… that is actually easier said and done than how to avoid in the future. First of all, most drivers here have no training nor experinec, they hardly use their mirrors less of all any defensive techniques. Second, if you think bus drivers drive badly, think they are at the wheel 12 to 17 hours. Who knows how many hours for how many days was this cement truck driver working at the wheel? Or if he even had experience driving this contraption.
I also wondered why no one is trained to use the gears to slow down and eventually given some clearance you can be going just at a crawl. Slow enough to mitigate a lot of carnage.
Or experience driving up/down the mountain.
I haven’t read too many of the news articles, but I’m curious as to where it was coming from? I know part of Balaka/101 and Yang Jing/2 needed repairs to the road due to landslides from the rain a month or two ago.
Otherwise, you rarely see those kinds of trucks on Yang De Blvd.
Like, in the ol country, we started having a spat of accidents with cement and timber trucks, even buses, because the bosses and company owners decided to save money by hiring young, inexperienced drivers, riding them like ponies and firing them if any problem -read accident- arose. Carnage on the streets and no legal responsibility.
Thanks.
Horrible.
truck or not, people here drive like pieces of shit and get away with it. i could get killed just the same way from walking down the small alley next to my street and getting hit by a speeding wanker that doesn’t posses the power of observation or slowing down.
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6 years experienced driver. Dead in situ. Co driver jumped off the truck. Says he was asleep but that he felt when the driver lost control of the truck. That it was not working properly. Sounds like mechanical failure. Maybe truck was overloaded.
13 cars. 9 scooters hit. 4 dead.
Cars thrown over house. Ended up second floor. Roof collapsed.
There are other videos with different angles. Road was too narrow for cars to escape. Most caught at red light.
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Between this and the restaurant explosion in Taichung, it’s been a dramatic (and horrific) 24 hours in Taiwan. Although the news is having a field day with all their CCTV snuff films.
Post the other videos if you have links…
Cement pump trucks like that should have air brakes which are supposed to be failsafe, if the air pressure is lost the brakes come on. Any problem with the system and the brakes come on. More likely the driver fell asleep or it is possible that the brake pads were so worn that they just didn’t work. WRT to the location, I know it, the car driver nay very well have had to come out slow to wait for the road to clear for them to drive into it. Not a lot they could do. WRT to using gears to slow down, on a fast descent they won’t slow you that much, yes there is some braking but you can’t use it to slow you down a lot. You could pull on the handbrake but on something like that going at that speed pulling the handbrake on will probably cause it to go wildly out of control anyway.
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!!!
At what stage did he do that?
That’s something they should be able to determine pretty quickly in an investigation
Good analysis, btw
The brake pads worn out could be a reason, yes. As for the gears… he could have tried to shift down to 1st gear and then try to use the handbrake. Don’t trucks have some emergency brake system?
BTW, it looked a bit overloaded to me.
I am not sure people want to see here that Gore pr0n. Mods? If you guys say OK I will load the link. You just see there was nowhere to run. They couldn’t escape.