LIGHTING
REAL WORLD SCENARIOS By James E. Lewis
I’d
like to paint you a scenario – actually, two scenarios. These scenarios are real and were experienced by me, and an epiphany occurred after the second one – perhaps you can relate. I was very active in safety audits and driver training for several years, where I’d go into a small towing or trucking company, perform a mock DOT audit, check out their training records, human resources driver documentation, and things like that, and then train their drivers – especially in the towing company situations. Within 30 days, I duplicated the same scenario almost exactly with one major difference that I’ll explain in a moment. Please visualize with me: It was cold and dead in the middle of winter – the first 36
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scenario was in North Texas – Amarillo, to be exact, and the other was in Strasburg, Colorado, east of Denver. Both scenarios involved a 50-ton wrecker, both JerrDan units, and both were built on a Peterbilt chassis. Both trucks were fairly new and well-equipped. In both scenarios, I had a trainee with me operating the primary truck (with me) and a secondary unit with another operator.
Specifics of the first scenario: We got a call from Texas Department of Public Safety about a tractor-trailer that had gone off the road on I-40 and down into a ditch that was about 20 feet deep. The tractor-trailer was about 60 feet from the hard surface. It
