Excessive speed....

The transportation of scrap to and from our plants via tractor trailer occurs countless times throughout every day. The vast majority of these pickups and deliveries occur without incident. Nevertheless, there are incidents that occur. Our goal on publicizing these incidents is to make our industry aware that the loading of scrap trucks cannot be taken for granted. The operation of loading trucks has to be standardized and regulated within each plant. It appears that the number of transportation incidents are growing in our opinion. Here is a recent incident.

A tractor-trailer attempting to turn onto Bellefontaine Road in Lima, Ohio, USA overturned around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, February 8, 2017, causing a load of scrap metal to be dumped onto a nearby sidewalk and the parking lot of a Speedway gas station.

The driver, was wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident and was not injured, but he was cited for failure to control. No other vehicles or individuals were involved.

An officer of the Ohio State Highway Patrol said it appeared that the truck driver was traveling too fast when he drove through the intersection of state Route 309 and Bellefontaine Road, near the Interstate 75 interchange.

“The vehicle is naturally top heavy, so it overturned and spilled out the contents — in this case it was aluminum scrap metal — onto the sidewalk,” said the Ohio State Highway Patrol officer.

Two lanes of through traffic near the intersection were shut down for roughly three hours, as a towing company cleaned up the wreckage. The lanes opened back up around 12:40 p.m. Wednesday.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol officer said the vehicle was carrying a load of scrap metal from a Honda facility to a local scrap yard. The vehicle suffered cosmetic and functional damage to its right side, the Ohio State Highway Patrol officer said, though further evaluation is needed to determine if it is repairable.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is glad that neither the truck driver, nearby motorists, nor any pedestrians were injured in this incident. We hope that in the future this truck driver will acknowledge that driving over the speed limit is hazardous. To our readers who drive a vehicle, you too should realize that driving over the speed limit is hazardous. The APSB has posted incidents where excessive speed was a contributing factor in the accident.

Please comment.