The tragedy of bloodshed
involving Lyceum students at Tempi, the evening of April 13 2003, should be an
unacceptable event in today's Greece. The blood-curdling pictures of that
collision were beyond description and the responsibility of the Traffic Safety
officials was obvious. There are no appropriate words in the Greek dictionary
and adequate phraseology in the language system, which can describe the
outrageous sacrifice of young offsprings 15 and 16 years old, on the altar of
the asphalt. The palpable panic of Traffic Safety Officials and the shouting
and hysterical posturing in Greek TV and in the Press, concerning the causes of
the sudden tragedy and the on the spot,
immediate assignment of responsibility, have produced great disappointment
within the Omogenia. These spasmodic reactions betray a systematic defect of
traffic safety in Greece, they in effect, obscure the fundamental causes of the
fiasco and make almost impossible the undertaking of strong corrective action.
Furthermore, this ghastly event has already spread internationally, reflecting
negatively on Greece, with pictures in the New York Times of the funeral of two
students being carried in white
caskets. Some adverse consequences on the Olympics 2004 are to be expected.
As members of a permanent American Task-Force, organized by the Think-Tank of
our Society, with years of research on
Traffic Safety in Greece and contacts
with Greek Officials in June 2001, we shall describe here, a)
the basic causes of the Tragedy at Tempi, b) the relevant strict
regulations of the famous Highway Patrol of California(CHP) and c) a proposal,
for drastic improvement of Traffic Safety for Commercial Vehicles in Greece, in
order to avoid similar tragedies in the
future.
We do not need a rocket
scientist to find out who is responsible for the overloaded Truck (Dalika) and
the inadequately secured cargo of formica sheets, whose slippage produced loss
of driver control of the truck and its entry into the opposite lane, in a
front-lateral collision with the hapless bus. At this point we consider it
useful to describe the strict regulations of CHP for securing Cargo and the
compulsory training and written driver exams on this specific issue, before
taking the final test, for a driver's Commercial Vehicle license. These
regulations are strictly followed by an army of drivers of Trucks of various
lengths and load capacity, under the watchful eye of the ubiquitous CHP, and
inspections are carried out within special facilities distributed along the
highways of California, for enforcement of cargo weight and other particulars
(vide infra). The drivers of commercial vehicles themselves, do consider the
CHP regulations quite indispensable for their survival within the mammoth road
network of the State. California is three times the size of Greece, with a
population of about 35 million, and 6,626,974 Commercial Vehicles to boot. All
regulations for securing Cargo on Commercial Vehicles are described beautifully
in a superb official Booklet of 153 pages, the "California Commercial
Vehicle Handbook".
Chapter 3, of the Booklet concerns the transportation of Cargo and reads as
follows:
a) You must pass a written test on cargo safety to get a
commercial driver license.
b) If you load or secure cargo incorrectly, it can be a
danger to others and to yourself. Loose cargo that falls off a vehicle can
cause traffic problems and others could be hurt or killed. Loose cargo can hurt
or kill you during a quick stop or accident. Your vehicle can be damaged by an
overload. Steering can be affected by an improperly loaded vehicle making it
more difficult to control.
c) Whether you load and secure the cargo yourself, you
are responsible for: inspecting cargo, recognizing overloads and poorly
balanced weight and ensuring that the cargo is securely tied down and covered,
if applicable.
d) As part of your pre-trip inspection, check for
overloads, poorly balanced weight, and cargo that is not secured correctly.
Inspect the cargo and its devices again within 25 miles after beginning the
trip. Make any adjustments needed. Check the cargo and securing devices as
often as necessary during a trip to keep the load secure. Inspect again after
you have driven for 3 hours or 150 miles, whichever comes first and after every
brake you take during driving.
"Blocking is used in the
front, back, and/or sides of a piece of cargo to keep it from sliding. Blocking
is shaped to fit smugly against cargo. It is secured to the cargo deck to
prevent cargo movement. Bracing is also used to prevent the movement of cargo.
Bracing goes from the upper part of the cargo to the floor and/or walls of the
cargo compartment. On flatbed trailers without sides, cargo must be secured to
keep it from shifting and falling off. Proper tie-down equipment must be used,
including ropes, straps, chains, and tension devices (winches, ranches,
cinching components). Tide-downs must be attached to the vehicle correctly (by
hook, bolt, rails, rings). Cargo should have at least one tide-down for each 10
feet of cargo. Make sure you have enough tide-downs to meet this need. No
matter how small the cargo, it should have at least two tide-downs holding
it"
.
The CHP maintains a
significant commercial enforcement operation. In addition to the road patrol
officers, the CHP commercial vehicle enforcement program includes Motor Vehicle
Operations, Inspection Facilities, Scale Platforms, and Mobile Road Enforcement
Officers (MRE's).
a) The Motor Carrier
Operations, consist of civilian personnel who inspect and enforce commercial
vehicle fleet operations. These inspectors regularly visit trucking company
fleet terminals or yards to inspect their equipment. For instance, in Hayward
in northern California there is a large trucking company called "Vicking
Trucking" with a large number of Trucks that move freight through
California and the rest of the US. Motor carrier specialists regularly visit
their yards and terminals to inspect their equipment, driver's logs, brakes,
lights and other accessories.
b) There are approximately 17
Inspection Facilities throughout California. They are staffed with both
uniformed and non-uniformed personnel. Usually the facilities require only a
few uniformed officers who are needed to write citations and make arrests.
However, the majority of people assigned to each facility are non-uniformed
personnel called: Commercial Vehicle Inspection Specialists (CVIS). The
inspection facilities operate as follows: All Trucks (pick-ups excluded) are
required to pull into every facility unless a "By-pass" sign is on,
indicating that the facility is closed. The Truck driver turns into the facility
and crosses over a platform scale. A uniformed officer inspects the truck and
determines whether or not the vehicle is over-weight, oversized, or otherwise
unsafe.
Moreover, the vehicle passes
under a Geiger counter for possible detection of radiation.
The inspecting officer will
identify the color-coded sticker on the side of the cab of the truck indicating
the date it was last inspected. If it was observed within the last 90 days and
provided that there are no other indications that the vehicle needs to be
checked further, the officer will signal the driver with a green light to leave
the facility and re-enter the freeway. However, if the inspection sticker was
over 90 days old, or there are indications of some size, weight, load, or other
safety problems, the officer then will direct the driver by loudspeaker to pull
into one of the inspection bays. Thus the driver will leave the platform scale
and drive into the inspection bay at the direction of a CVIS. Once inside the
inspection bay the CVIS will order the driver to present his driver's license,
driver's log, and shipping papers for inspection. Subsequently the CVIS will
perform some mechanical inspections. For example, he/she will get on a creeper
and go under the vehicle to inspect the brakes, the emergency stopping system,
air pressure, lights, tires, steering system and other elements.
The CVIS completes the
inspection and if no violations are detected a new inspection sticker is issued
and the driver is released. However if deficiencies were found, the CVIS will
forward the information to one of the uniformed officers, who will then issue
the driver a citation or notice to correct the equipment and appear in court.
In extreme cases the officer will seize or impound the vehicle or load and keep
it at the facility until the corrections have been completed.
c) There are about 34 platform scales throughout California. These
scales are staffed by uniformed officers who check trucks for over-weight,
over-length, or other unsafe conditions. Typically, the scales are operated
only during business hours or during special times.
d) Mobile Road Enforcement
officers, otherwise known as MRE's are single officers in blue jump suits
driving around in panel trucks loaded with truck inspection equipment. They
typically patrol the highways and pull trucks over to the side of the road for
random inspections. Additionally, they will set up along the road at various
locations to randomly pull over and inspect drivers and their trucks. Some of
the fines of these commercial vehicle violations are in the thousands of
dollars (especially the overweight violations) and generate large sums of
revenues for the cities involved.
e) Finally, the CHP provides information and training on the response to and
the handling of suspected biological agents and hazardous materials. It also
coordinates a broad range of special programs and grants, and manages
commercial training programs such as the Commercial Industry Education
Program(CIEP).
Moreover, it manages a
database of commercial vehicle registrations, inspections, and violations.
Thus, an officer can quickly determine the inspection and violation history of
any commercial vehicle operating in California.
In 2001 there were 6,626,974
commercial vehicles in California owned mainly by big transportation companies
and some of them privately owned. All of them travel within an extensive road
network. That year there were 35,809 collisions involving commercial vehicles
362 of them fatal. Moreover, there were 8,729 non-fatal collisions, reporting
13, 011 injured individuals. Additional information concerning collisions of
commercial vehicles in California for the years 1997-2001 are shown in Table I.
In Greece on the other hand, 420 fatal collisions involving commercial vehicles were reported for 2002,
which amounts to three times the fatal collisions when compared to California,
with its population of about 35 million, a huge roadway network and with about 22
million motor vehicles on the road.
The tragedies at Tempi and
Aliakmon, taken together with the high rate of collisions in 2002, are only the
apex of the iceberg. The problem of Commercial Vehicles in Greece is huge,
despite the valiant efforts of the Greek Highway Patrol, which has handed out a
large number of citations. Excessive speed, overweight, inappropriate passing,
aggressively dominating the road because of size (and bravado), inadequate training
of drivers and serious lack of driving dexterity (due to fraudulent licenses),
are some of the frequent causes of collisions. Furthermore, drugs of abuse (the
rumor has it that the smell of cannabis is frequent in truck terminals and
yards), the tiredness and lack of sleep of drivers, who drive over the speed
limit, half asleep 15 hours per day, in order to bit the clock and get paid for
that trip, all taken together, contribute to very poor traffic safety for
commercial vehicles.
Additionally, many roads are
dangerous, the truck tires and the tie-downs are often worn-out and the cargo
is poorly loaded and balanced, which constitutes great danger for everybody
using the highway network. The anomalous and dysfunctional state of many
commercial vehicles contributes to an aura of "the Terrorism of the
Dalikas (Trucks)" within the country's road network. The situation is even
worse in the highways of the northern part of the country which are replete
with hundreds of commercial vehicles from Turkey, Bulgaria, and Rumania, whose
drivers travel mainly at night, undisturbed and in the middle of the road for
their personal safety!
However, the most
destructive, the most notorious and ubiquitous cause for the general
dysfunction of commercial vehicles, is the miasma of "corruption",
the bribing of officials, which represents part of the Lernaean Hydra, which
has ravaged Greece. The whole bribery situation was described with a travel
chronicle by two courageous Greek Reporters on April 20, 2003. They traveled on
a loaded truck starting from Athens towards Corinth, Patras, Rio-Antirrio,
Agrinio, Amfilochia and Ioannina.
The mischief they witnessed
and described first hand, was unacceptable for a European nation like Greece.
The problem of corruption is truly pervasive. Such bribing of a CHP Officer in
California and the rest of the United States is unheard off, except if one
desires to go to prison.
The enforcement of traffic safety rules in California is superb on all counts
and the collisions that inescapably occur, include proportionally much fewer
deaths as compared to those in Greece. Moreover, the CHP and CHP Academy are
considered to be the best in America. In sharp contrast, the control and
enforcement of Commercial Vehicles in Greece as well as driver training are
deficient, the roads are dangerous in many spots, with inadequate lighting and
road signs, and worst of all, the unprofessional behavior of many drivers,
create in sum, a large number of collisions. In general, the control and
enforcement of Commercial Vehicles appears chaotic ("Crazy Trucks in a
raving mad Country" was the title of a newspaper article on 4-20-2003).
The control and enforcement of Commercial Vehicle traffic is in dire need
of systematic study, leading to
development of a practical strategic plan, aimed at a permanent reduction of
deaths and injuries from collisions of trucks with other vehicles. This problem
is extraordinary, as well as difficult to solve, because it requires
improvements at several levels.
CONCLUSION
The supervision and enforcement of
traffic safety rules for Commercial Vehicles in today's Greece is quite
inadequate and collisions with trucks create havoc on asphalt, with deaths and
injuries galore, especially within the known dangerous spots, of the national
and secondary road network. The pain and horror from the tragedy at Tempi, with
the pictures of the destroyed Bus and the white casket funerals, have made the
rounds on TV screens and the Internet, all over the world. In a demographically
weak nation like Greece such spectacular bloodshed on asphalt, due to
collisions with commercial vehicles, should be unacceptable.
Half- baked measures to enhance control and supervision of
commercial vehicles and the increase of penalties for violators, will not solve
the problem. We have provided a general overview for the causes of collisions
and the urgently needed upgrading of control, supervision and enforcement of
commercial traffic in Greece, by taking a few pages from the regulations of
California Highway Patrol, the best of the best, in these United States, with
its 285 million population. The task in Greece will be difficult and will
require hard work for many years to come, coupled with persistence and
perspicacity. Postgraduate training a select group of English speaking Greek
Highway Patrol Officers in California might be beneficial to Greece.
Furthermore, another fundamental issue will be the defeat of corruption within
the traffic safety system. Our Task-Force is ready and willing to collaborate
with local Traffic Safety Experts, the National Committee for Traffic Safety
and with Officials of the Ministries of Public Order and Transportation for the
good of the people of Greece.
|
Year |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
|
Miles Travelled per Vehicle (Billions) |
14,484 |
16,025 |
16749 |
18,205 |
18,610 |
|
Registered Vehicles |
5,683,173 |
5,978,355 |
6,255,589 |
6,689,361 |
6,626,974 |
|
Total Collisions |
33,145 |
35,231 |
35,649 |
37,049 |
35,809 |
|
Lethal Collisions |
364 |
343 |
334 |
366 |
362 |
|
Deaths |
439 |
407 |
395 |
426 |
413 |
|
Deaths per 100 Million Miles |
3.03 |
2.54 |
2.36 |
2.36 |
2.22 |
|
Non-Lethal Collisions |
8,421 |
8,447 |
8,623 |
8,695 |
8,729 |
|
Injured |
12,624 |
12,853 |
12,995 |
12,896 |
13,011 |
8-13-2003
*(Em) Professor of Medicine
and Biological Chemistry, UC, Davis, Science Advisor to CHP Commissioner and
President of an American Task-Force for Traffic Safety in Greece.
** An Economist and seasoned Executive at Boeing Corporation, Seattle WA, and
Task-Force Program Director.
***(Rt) Captain California Highway Patrol, and Task-Force Vice-Chairman.
The Task-Force for Traffic
Safety in Greece, has been established by Demokritos Society of America, a
Think-Tank, devoted to issues of Hellenism.
E-Mail: geokas@msn.com
WEB: WWW.DEMOKRITOS.ORG
FAX: 925\946-1987