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The safety record of the trucking company involved in the Porter Square crash
By adamg on Wed, 10/05/2016 - 8:45pm
Brett rummaged around the safety record of Mitlitsky Eggs and found 23 violations in two years.
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Comments
Driver licensed?
There is an rummer going around that the driver didn't have a valid license and/or a CDL. It would be interesting if the authorities confirm or refute this.
Resder's Digest version of the violations
2 violations within a 3 weeks span for using a handheld device while driving. One violation for speeding more then 15 MPH above the limit. Some addition violations for working too long of shifts.
The other violations are mechanical in nature, although some involve things such as brakes.
60% of inspections = the vehicle being taken out of service
Your summary is disingenuous at best. The violations, first of all, are only within the last 2 years; DOT doesn't provide data further back.
Second: 60% of the inspections resulted in the vehicle being deemed unfit for travel. They included *numerous* brake system issues. There were also failures for not having functioning headlights, turn signals, and driving vehicles that had not been inspected. For comparison's sake: Ryder, who leases the truck involved in the crash, has a out-of-service failure rate of less than ten percent across their fleet.
The issues around drivers consisted of drivers driving without required records, driving too long, and so on.
Calm down Francis
His summary was a summary at best. I don't descry any implicit bias in his four sentences.
Summary?
Nope. Deliberate set of omissions to minimize the fact that an unsafe company hired an unqualified driver to pilot an oversize vehicle in an intensely urban area at rush hour.
Huh?
I didn't try to whitewash anything. I thought my summery of the DOT graphic was pretty damning.
Accident
Sad a biker got killed, who was at fault though, when I did my paper route I rode at a pace where I could easily stop for vehicles. these are busy Cambridge streets, not a Tour de France race path. The bikers need to ride at max 5-10 mph.
Tell us more
You seem to know exactly what happened in Porter Square this morning.
I always find comparing adults to children to be valid
It makes a lot of sense to compare your suburban paper route when you were 12 to an adult commuting to work. A whole lot.
A 60-year old adult
A doctor, with a long record of involvement in cycling safety, who had been commuting through there for decades.
Right.
So you think bikers should go
So you think bikers should go 5-10mph max, do you think the same should be true for cars and trucks? Thats odd you had a paper route that went through porter sq, or are you just injecting unrelated anecdotes into the discussion. When I drove my car around the parking lot, I only went 5mph since there were lots of pedestrians and cars going in and out.
No
They are the traffic, as they claim, so they should be going the same speed as traffic - weaving around cars, trucks and buses stuck in a traffic jab is begging to get turned into a road burger.
This post is so dumb. It
This post is so dumb. It perfectly encapsulates the obnoxious, dangerous, entitled attitude drivers have.
Yes!
My favorite kind of UHub threads (aside from it having to do with someone losing their life, RIP), gross generalizations, hyperbole, and people discussing an issue where very few/if any facts are known. Have at it!
This post is so dumb
This post is so dumb. It perfectly encapsulates the obnoxious, myopic view some people have towards drivers. And I say that as a cyclist who rides regularly.
Yes, the original post was definitely lacking any intellectual perspective, and you somehow managed to match it. Congrats. You certainly are a one-trick pony.
Or
Cars could go 5-10 mph max.
Police haven't released any
Police haven't released any information about the crash so there's no way to know who is at fault.
If you're referring to information circulating the Internet, it's not credible. Information posted on reddit has already been proven wrong. People can pretend they saw whatever, and that doesn't make it true.
Until companies are held
Until companies are held accountable, the occasional death will just be a cost of doing business for them. Why not boycott Mitlitsky? Shout their name loud and clear until they change their procedures and donate money to infrastructure. Pressure local businesses hard to stop carrying their eggs. I'm sure these issues are rampant across all trucking outfits, but hey, gotta start somewhere, and driving a behemoth vehicle like that on a city street comes with *the responsibility to know how to drive it without killing people*.
Blind spots
Ever heard of them?
Indeed
Yes, and you appear to have several. Go educate yourself on the case at hand, then see if you still want to talk about "blind spots", and brand yourself as an irrelevant twit.
Case at hand
Involves a truck that is made out of very opaque (and very heavy) metal, not transparent glass as some of you clowns might think. Driving next to one where you cannot be seen by the driver is borderline suicidal, let alone riding a bike. And passing one at an intersection is begging to get run over.
Yes
If your vehicle has them, it is unsafe to operate on urban roads.
If you have them because you are lazy to turn your head or divert attention from that LOLOMG! text, you need to get off the road because you aren't fit to drive.
From the Mitlitsky website (Copyright 2007 ©)
We are currently seeking an experienced CDL class-A driver to join our team.
Driver requirements include:
Minimum 3 years class-A experience
Knowledge of the 5 boroughs of New York City
Residence close proximity to workplace
Driver responsibilities include:
Customer Service
Collecting Money
Vehicle Maintenance
Some Physical Labor Required
Are you trying to tell us
Are you trying to tell us something other than a trucking company is looking for a truck driver?
No
But the truck drivers that they hire are responsible for what mechanics are supposed to do.
Thank you Adam and Brett
This is very interesting information which our local newspapers and TV-alleged-news outlets don't seem that eager to locate or publish.
Point of comparison?
This is just one isolated data point. How does this compare to other similar companies? Maybe 23 violations in 2 years is atrocious; maybe they are the safest operator in the country.
Is one needed?
You seem to think that the "data point" contains no useful information simply because there's no comparison. Does 60% of inspected vehicles being deemed unfit for service mean nothing to you? If you knew that the average company had 70% of trucks fail inspection, would you think that the first company's vehicles were safe to be on the road?
I would think the vehicles on
I would think the vehicles on the road are the 40% that passed inspection.
What kind of fallacy would this be?
I'm thinking it is the "but mom everybody is doing it" fallacy.
The fact is, their safety record is deplorable, and they should only be transporting baskets of deplorables, not running down veteran cyclists with strong safety records.
What "the other kids are doing" is entirely irrelevant.
Yes, if everyone does it,
Yes, if everyone does it, that means everyone should be held accountable, not no one. So picking a place to start exerting pressure isn't scapegoating, even if it may be somewhat arbitrary that this particular truck happened to kill someone and another poorly trained or unlicensed driver didn't.
Unless the kids are being
Unless the kids are being loud on the green line. Then it is our responsibility as adults to dole out some swift and merciless bare-bottomed spankings.
Sounds pretty serious
I'm sure the Commonwealth will give them a stern talking-to. Maybe even threaten to slap their wrist.
Share the road,
share the costs, share in the deaths.
This is an awful, awful
This is an awful, awful comment. What a horrible thing to say.
Indeed
Please provide us with a summary of truck drivers who were killed by cyclists in the past year, and how much money this cost the trucking industry.
Well
I almost hit a bike once, and while swerving I cut myself shaving, dropped my phone AND fajita, and possibly hit one or two people on the sidewalk, and I blame the bike for that
Are you suggesting
bikes death rates on our roads exceed the rate of car crash fatalities?
Per mile traveled?
Yes, bicyclist death rates per mile traveled are higher than motorist death rates per mile traveled. Any source you care to confer with will state that.
Estimates range from 3.5 times as high per mile traveled to 11 times as high; let's say six or seven times as high.
Citation
from a credible source, please.
I looked at the stats
Fatality rates for cars are measured in VMT, 100 million miles traveled, while for bikes it is against the general population, see NHTSA
bikes
and cars
Using the statistic of miles traveled for fatality rates in cyclists is bogus, for pedestrians the fatality rate by mile traveled is even higher and for turtles it is the highest of all.
At a rate of 2.35 per million, cyclists have a fatality rate that is 45 times lower than for cars.
Failed that class, did you?
You compare stats of fatality rates per mile traveled and fatality rates per general population and determine one is lower? Sorry, you're doing it wrong.
Here's the information you lack:
http://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/pmt_TRPTRANS_WHYTRP1S.html
8,956,000 person-miles traveled on bike per year.
27,943,000 person-miles pedestrian
Numbnut
This is how lame your response is, strongly worded of course. My link to the NHTSA shows car fatalities at 1.07 deaths per 100 *million* vehicle miles. You repeat a stat, from a survey no less, of approx 9 million bike miles traveled. Well at about 700 bike crash deaths a year, that gives a comparable fatality rate of more than 7000 deaths per 100 million cycled miles.
You sir (or madam) are an idiot.
Billions
I'll try to explain this simply, because it's clear you have some emotional problems that prevent you being able to talk normally with grownups. It's okay; that usually passes once you're out of the teenage years. We all understand. But there are also grownups reading this, so I'll imagine this is for them too.
First off, I did transcribe a number wrong here, but you should have been able to read it correctly on the table I linked to. The unit for the table is millions, not thousands. That's three more zeroes; bicyclists in the USA put in close to 9 billion miles yearly, not almost 9 million.
The 2009 figure of 8.956 billion yearly miles for bicyclists is the only figure the NHTS has published that puts bicyclists on the same standard for comparison with motorists. It is one of the few government agencies that tries to estimate this. The NHTSA does not publish a comparable figure.
This figure is widely reported elsewhere, for example:
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/publications/passenger_travel_2016/tables/ta...
http://vault.sierraclub.org/pressroom/downloads/BikeMonth_Factsheet_0512...
Other numbers may exist, but this is the most accepted.
So if one corrects for the missing three zeroes, the rate is 6.9 bicycle fatalities per hundred million miles traveled - as I said previously, between six and seven times the rate of automobile fatalities.
If you're still confused, you should call upstairs and have your mom help you understand this.
Wow!
This is either and example of "How to Lie With Statistics" or "I really don't know what the hell I'm doing with statistics".
Either way, it is wrong.
Fatal
Well suck_puppy, your link has no reference to fatalities. At least you got swirly to swallow your spume. As for stats, I guess I could know as much as you, if city hospital offered lobotomies...
You know what?
You really need to take a course in statistics and inference.
I'm not even going to begin to catalogue the errors you have made here - I don't teach and grade undergraduate stats anymore.
Lets just say that you really don't know what you are doing here. Best that you go to Coursera and learn a few things before you try again.
Swallowing puppet
Notice how suck_puppy provided a link that has no reference to fatality rates, after claiming there were all sorts of studies supporting their view, and swallow_grill offers no facts whatsoever, but they challenge my ability to do math.
If they only knew.
Next time you wonder why people suk at math, think swallows_grill. Maybe swallows_grill taught stats, who knows, but whoever it was got screwed out of their tuition.
Clean up
On the liquor aisle.
Thank you
Thank you to Brett for his rummaging and adamg for reposting, both with the pertinent links for this company.
Meaningless without context
This is meaningless without context. What's a typical safety record for a company like this?
And only two of those are "unsafe driving."