Increase in Accidents Raises Safety Questions : Image of Truckers Travels Bumpy Road

When Dave Pritchard spotted the speeding big rig in his rear-view mirror, the 18-wheeler was tailgating a small blue car on the 91 Freeway east of Buena Park. Although he isn’t a cop, Pritchard reached for the clipboard he uses on safety patrols.

As the motorist scurried out of the way, the tractor--hauling an empty 45-foot trailer--hurried up behind a pickup truck, hovered there, changed lanes and tailgated another passenger car.

Still watching through the mirror, Pritchard deliberately drove his passenger car into the trucker’s lane and glanced at the speedometer. “He’s going 65, now about 70,” he said. The rig loomed close behind. As Pritchard got over, the speeding truck roared past, revealing a “Please Drive Safely” sign on the rear.

“At one point, I could have stood on my rear bumper and stepped across to his,” Pritchard said. He noted the time, location and the truck’s state registration number for a report to the California Trucking Assn. and a follow-up phone call under the CTA’s safety patrol program.

“He’s an accident waiting to happen,” said Pritchard, driver and safety supervisor for La Mirada-based Hadley Auto Transport, a CTA member. “And the way he’s driving it will be just a matter of time. He tailgates. He makes unsafe lane changes. He’s impatient. This is the type of driver who gives trucking a bad name.”

Trucking’s image--and safety record--is concerning a lot of Californians these days because of a three-year upward trend in truck accidents, and observers both inside and outside the industry are wondering why:

- Is it because state and federal deregulation of trucking has created fierce competition and cutthroat rate-cutting, a situation leading some economically pressed truckers to speed, drive up to 16 and 20 hours a day and delay maintenance at the cost of safety?

- Is there a new breed of don’t-give-a-damn truckers on the highway--inconsiderate and sometimes ill-trained--who cause accidents by driving too fast, changing lanes recklessly and failing to yield the right of way to other motorists?

- Is the increase in the number of truck accidents simply to be expected because there are now about 20 million vehicles registered in the state, and more and more trucks and cars sharing the highways means more truck-involved accidents?

Whatever the answer, statistics compiled by the California Highway Patrol underscore a nettlesome problem worrying California public officials, trucking industry leaders and private organizations concerned about highway safety.

According to CHP statistics, there were 469,492 traffic accidents in the state in 1983, a 4.8% increase over the year before. But truck-involved accidents rose 9.3% to 29,130, while truck-at-fault accidents reached 14,066, up 15.8%.

In 1984, the total number of accidents increased to 484,000, a 3.2% rise over 1983, but truck-involved accidents rose 15.7% to 33,700, and the truck-at-fault accidents soared to 16,800, an increase of 19.4%. During the first nine months of 1985, the total number of motor vehicle accidents rose 2.6% over the same period in 1984 while truck-at-fault accidents were up 7.3%.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, noted at a recent Los Angeles hearing on truck safety that there has been a “steady and startling increase” in truck accidents. Fatal truck accidents are up 29.5% in California while injury accidents are up 26.3% since 1982, he said.

“Although travel on our highways is increasing, the accident statistics show that truck accidents have gone up twice as fast as accidents involving all vehicles,” Katz said. And he added, “In an accident with a truck, the occupants of a car are 29 times more likely to be killed or injured than the truck driver.”

Most Are Professionals

CHP Commissioner James E. Smith blames a few truckers for hurting the courteous, law-abiding majority. Most truck drivers, he says, are professionals who conduct themselves in an exemplary fashion.

“It is about that minority that motorists write to say that they have been tailgated, passed, or sometimes pushed off the road by truck drivers who are not only rude but are, in their opinion, an outright menace,” Smith told the California Trucking Assn. and Mike Parkhurst, president of the Independent Trucking Assn. While truck accidents are still on the increase, Smith is hopeful that the three-year upward trend may be leveling off. But he says he will not be satisfied until the accident-curve is again going down.

Charles Ramorino, board chairman of the 2,800-member California Trucking Assn., and President-elect Jerry D. Lundberg said in a letter to Gov. George Deukmejian in January that their organization “continues to view with alarm” the number of truck-caused accidents on California highways.

“Statistics compiled by the California Highway Patrol show that driver error--particularly, unsafe speed--continues to be the overriding cause of these accidents, followed in descending order by unsafe lane changes, unsafe turns, improper backing and/or starting and mechanical defects,” they said.

Contending that the scope of the problem is beyond the CTA’s control and should include all companies and all drivers, the two urged Deukmejian to appoint a special truck safety crisis task force “to meaningfully address” the issues of safety and driver error.

Lack of Information

Part of the problem of determining who is responsible for the increase in truck-caused accidents is a lack of detailed information, according to the CTA’s Karen Rasmussen. “Are they leased drivers? Private drivers? Fleet drivers? What are their driving records? What kind of equipment are they driving? What is a truck? How many axles are we talking about?” she asks.

To close the information gap, the trucking association is proposing that several state agencies, including the CHP, Public Utilities Commission, Caltrans and Department of Motor Vehicles, join in collecting accident data.

While specific questions about individual truck accidents abound, Ramorino, who founded a San Francisco trucking firm more than a quarter-century ago, is certain he knows why truck accidents are on the rise again in California.

“My feeling has never wavered in five years,” he told The Times. “Deregulation caused the problem that we are in now. There were just too many new entrants into the industry who really didn’t know what they were doing.

“Many of them were pathological rate-cutters, trying to get new business by cutting their rates. . . . They didn’t know their costs and would go from here-to-there for a specific price without putting money aside to maintain their trucks safely or replace them. They also ran too many hours. That’s what happened to safety in California.”

‘No Ax to Grind’

Ramorino insists he has “no ax to grind” in talking about competitive rate-cutters because his firm has experienced a “steady, calculated growth” in all but two years of its existence. But he pointed out that others have not been so fortunate.

Since the PUC loosened controls in 1979, Ramorino said, bankruptcies of California trucking companies have risen 272%; the number of unprofitable carriers is up 29%; wages are down 22% and the average age of the truck fleet has risen from 4.3 years to 6.4 years.

What happened nationally when deregulation went into effect is described in a report published by the American Automobile Assn. Foundation for Traffic Safety. It goes like this:

For more than 40 years the motor carrier industry was closely regulated by the federal Interstate Commerce Commission under the Motor Carrier Act of 1935, flourishing under conditions of government-controlled rates and limitations on new carriers entering the field.

But, trucking changed drastically in 1980 with the passage of the deregulating federal Motor Carrier Act, permitting virtually unrestricted entry of new carriers into trucking, rampant price-cutting and rapid movement toward total competition.

Some Firms Cut Corners

Under the new economic conditions, the report said, profits for hauling freight diminished as fierce competition forced rates down, while costs of fuel, labor, parts and tires rose. To survive, hard- pressed marginal trucking operators cut costs by running older equipment, paying drivers less, driving beyond the legal time limits, writing log book “fiction” to cover up violations, and by neglecting maintenance.

“Structural changes resulting from deregulation of the industry have produced a combination of rapidly aging equipment operated by underpaid and overworked drivers, many of whom are not intellectually or emotionally qualified for what they are doing, and these changes are threatening safe operation of motor carrier equipment on the highways and endangering the lives of motorists and truckers alike.”

After deregulation came to California, getting into the trucking business required little more than a down payment on a truck and a filing fee, according to a report by PUC Administrative Law Judge William Turkish.

“The evidence . . . is clear that indiscriminate and non-compensatory rate reductions . . . have placed carriers in a position where in order to survive and protect their investments, they feel compelled to drive long hours, operate at excessive speeds, cut back on their truck maintenance and equipment replacement program and drive on bald, recapped or defective tires,” Turkish said. These factors have had “a negative effect on highway safety,” he concluded.

Behind all the talk about truck safety is a gut-level debate. Generally speaking, it matches long-established and larger motor carrier firms and their natural economic competitors: the late-arriving smaller firms and independent owner-operators.

Advocate of Deregulation

As a representative of the independents, Mike Parkhurst, editor and publisher of Overdrive, a Van Nuys-based trucking magazine, is an outspoken advocate of full deregulation of the trucking industry.

He ridicules the idea that a truck safety problem has been created by what he calls “quasi-deregulation.” He maintains that the larger trucking outfits, their industry associations and the Teamsters Union have played on fears about safety to give small trucking firms and owner-operators a “black eye.”

“My point is that there seems to be a trend lately to blame any rise in truck accidents on deregulation,” Parkhurst told The Times. “The only thing that regulation did over the years was to keep people from hauling freight that wanted to haul freight.”

He rejects suggestions that independent operators are cutting back on maintenance and the margin of safety because they find themselves in a competitive squeeze. He questions the motives of the California Trucking Assn., charging that the CTA is “running scared” because of a loss of membership.

In a recent guest newspaper column, Parkhurst insisted that considering the increase in the number of trucks on California highways, “Trucks are safe. Safer than ever.”

Whoever is right about the state of overall truck safety in California, surprise roadside inspections (under a federally financed crackdown by the CHP) strongly suggest that hundreds of mechanically defective trucks are running on state highways.

When a team of CHP patrolmen and civilian inspectors set up at the Oasis Rest Stop on Interstate 40 east of Barstow, nearly 40% of 571 trucks inspected over two days were ordered out of service until they could be repaired.

Checking 12 “critical items,” the strike force issued 1,159 citations. Slightly more than half of the trucks were cited for faulty brakes. The inspectors found 78 trucks with unsafe tires; 46 with frame/suspension problems, and 44 with steering deficiencies. Only 68 trucks (about 12%) were in compliance.

“That is unbelievable,” said Sacramento CHP Sgt. Larry Blood, who coordinates the federally funded Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program in California.

Waiting Out the CHP

More citations would have been issued if scores of drivers--alerted by fellow drivers using citizens band radios--had not decided to wait out the CHP. At one point, Blood said, 72 trucks were parked at a truck stop restaurant at Ludlow about 20 miles east of the checkpoint.

Every time the CHP sets up an inspection on roads that bypass the state’s permanent weight scales and mechanical inspection stations, the results are similar to the Oasis Rest Stop statistics, according to Blood. It is obvious to him that some truckers, driving rigs with grave mechanical troubles, are running detours to avoid inspection.

On a rainy day in December, Blood’s task force was working at rest stops on both sides of Highway 99 about five miles south of Tulare. One rig ordered to stop nearly sailed past CHP Officer Bill Prout because of faulty brakes. “Hey, where you going?” Prout shouted.

Civilian inspectors checked the truck and Prout wrote a citation. Afterward, the patrolman said the youthful driver from Tahlequah, Okla., had told of spending his last $20 on the truck.

“He has no money. No brakes. No nothing,” Prout explained. “And besides, the truck was smoking so much they’d probably put him in jail down in L.A.”

The trucker said he had been en route from Tulsa to Richmond, Calif., when he encountered the CHP stop.

“I don’t have no money at all,” he said. “I just put in a new engine and transmission in Albuquerque. I’ve got to find some parts and call out a tire man. I imagine it will cost $200. I called my dad and asked him for money. I’ve had one pretty-tee hell on this trip.” Standing and looking up the highway, Sgt. George Fetters saw a puff of diesel smoke rising from the exhaust of an 18-wheeler parked behind bushes shielding the big rig from view at the rest stop. “He’s probably catching up on his log book,” he said.

(Federal regulations limit big-rig operators to driving no more than 10 hours in a 15-hour period, after which they must rest eight hours. California limits drivers operating within the state to 12 hours behind the wheel within a 16-hour period.)

Fetters said that “lots of independents” drive as much as 20 hours out of 24 and stave off their weariness by using amphetamine stimulates, known as “highway aspirins” or “road pills.”

Driver Fatigue Blamed

If drivers drink coffee, they will tire slowly, according to Fetters, but if they use drugs total collapse may come without warning. He thinks driver fatigue is an important aspect of many accidents blamed on trucks.

Stopped beside Interstate 40 east of Barstow recently, Ed Herman, 49, of Hayward, Calif., a driver for Inway, castigated a new breed of trucker, the kind he says pull into a truck stop and ask, “Where can I get smoking dope? Where can I get road dope. Where are the cops at?”

He expressed shock that truck stops sell beer.

“If a guy is not working, what he does is his own business,” Herman said. “But, when he’s working and he goes in and buys a beer and goes back on the highway. Well?

Herman also complained about “untrained drivers” on the highway.

“They don’t take these guys on the ice in the wintertime. What they don’t understand is that they have 80,000 pounds going a mile a minute and what it takes to stop one of these. If there’s a problem, they don’t know what to do,” he said.

“We maybe have 10% of them who should not be here. Same as the CHP. Most of the drivers want to cooperate. They want to do a good job. We want to get all those bad trucks off the road.”

At the big 76 Truck Stop on Interstate 10 east of Ontario, Mike Slaughter, a 39-year-old big-rig driver for John D. Hughes of Houston, Tex., had plenty of time to talk about trucking. He was in his third day of waiting for his company dispatcher to find a new load of freight for him to drive home.

‘Inspections Are Good’

“I think inspections are good because there are a lot of trucks running unsafe,” he said. “Their tires are bad or their brakes are not set right. That way you take unsafe vehicles off the road which cause a lot of accidents.”

Slaughter blamed deregulation for “killing” the trucking industry.

“Everybody’s cutting everybody’s throat to get loads,” he said. “They might haul it at a little over cost. Rates were cheap from the beginning, but now with deregulation it is even cheaper. If it wasn’t for trucks, most of you people wouldn’t have clothes to wear, food to eat. Trucks run 90% of your freight.”

While blaming motorists and the way they drive for causing many truck accidents and creating highway hazards for truckers, Slaughter volunteered that there is a “different breed” of big-rig driver on the road, too.,

“Used to be drivers had more respect for each other and other people on the road,” he said. “You’re getting a younger breed, a different breed, and they don’t give a damn about nothing. Nobody but themselves. . . . They get out there and they run as hard as they can run. . . . They’re not as good a driver as we used to have on the road. And they give us a bad name.”