The Use of Huge Trucks

* Re “Oil Tanker Crash Kills Driver, Spills Fuel,” Feb. 29.

I know we’ve always had trucks. Trucks transport the foods, clothes, furniture, cars and nearly everything else we purchase. But only recently have we had the behemoths the size of football fields that now ply our highways and byways. They intimidate the average motorist, create giant blind spots, can barely make turns on city streets, block traffic when they unload and are apt to tip on sharp curves.

Last week’s tragedy in Santa Paula is a case in point.

If the trucking industry insists on the use of these giant trucks and trailers, I suggest that a special system of highways be built to accommodate these behemoths.

A recent article in Westways magazine describes the damage giant trucks are doing to our roads and freeways: “Frank McCullough, a PhD who works at the University of Texas in Austin, found that the damage done by just one pass of a tractor-trailer rig is equivalent to the damage done by 2,000 or 3,000 passenger vehicles. A 95,000-pound truck does two or three times the damage of an 80,000-pound truck.”

I do not have a problem with the trucking industry as such but I do have concern regarding the football-fields-on-wheels that are endangering the lives of the drivers of these giant trucks and gradually usurping our highways.

SAMUEL M. ROSEN

Newbury Park