Either they both got a secret signal from their native Planet Douche-Admiralty, or he just couldn’t bear George Will hogging all the negative attention. Wonkette reports the latest from the MSM’s other bowtied monster, Tucker Carlson:
You are likely aware that Tracy Morgan was injured when a semi truck driver allegedly fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into Morgan’s tour bus, killing one passenger and leaving Morgan and others in critical condition. The driver’s been charged with one count of death by vehicle, but Tucker’s just not so sure that falling asleep and killing someone is a big deal. Did we mention Tucker Carlson is an asshole?
Weirdly, Fox News had an actual lawyer on to talk about the case, rather than just asking Keith Ablow, or a friend of Tucker Carlson’s, or Michelle Malkin or something. The actual factual lawyer pointed out that yeah, this is a thing people totally go to jail for…
“I’m not trying to take anything away from the tragedy of this,” Carlson replied. “But 10 years in jail for falling asleep? It strikes me as very different from taking drugs, drinking. Has that ever happened? Has anybody ever actually gone to jail for falling asleep?” […]
“But, I mean sometimes people — and I’m not defending anyone here,” Carlson continued. “I’m really struck by the idea that someone who falls asleep — which is something that everybody does every day, not necessarily considered an act of recklessness — does it unintentionally, nods off is a criminal.”…
Video at the link. It’s every bit as horrible as you might imagine.
And speaking of reckless endangerment by driving, Steve Benen brings some political context:
At issue is something called “hours-of-service” rules for truckers and regulatory safeguards the Obama administration supports in the name of public safety.
The trucking industry, not surprisingly, isn’t fond of the regulations and has found an ally in Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who championed a measure last week to suspend, at least temporarily, the safeguards imposed last summer.
Again, we simply don’t know whether this weekend’s crash related to driver fatigue (update: According to prosecutors, the truck driver was behind the wheel “without having slept for a period in excess of 24 hours.”). But the high-profile crash nevertheless makes it an awkward time for policymakers to weaken federal trucking rules intended to improve public safety and hopefully save lives….
Best I can say in Collins’ defense is that I have never seen her pictured wearing a bow tie.
Mustang Bobby
Tucker Carlson is the Times Square knock-off version of George F. Will.
Amir Khalid
It seems to me that someone from Wal-Mart — not just the truck driver’s supervisor, but whoever sets the policies that lets them overwork their truck drivers, and perhaps the Wal-Mart company itself — should be criminally liable for this accident too.
NotMax
Was a part of the truck’s cargo sleeping pills?
(Too soon?)
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Wal-Mart is treading lightly here. Their driver hit a celebrity’s vehicle, and this is a high-profile crash. I’d like to see Wal-Mart nailed to the wall too. I’d like to hear more on how their truck driver did not sleep for 24 hours. What’s the backstory there?
I have several friends who are truckers, mostly owner-operators. It’s amazing how badly the industry as a whole treats its drivers, as commodities. The hours of service regs are controversial because drivers are paid by the mile or job, not by the hour.
They’re mandated to rest, but find fewer and fewer rest areas they can use for restorative sleep. NIMBY on truck parking, and drivers — particularly in congested areas — need to park safely and rest. Think of the state rest stops you’ve seen now closed for budgetary reasons.
And shippers/consignees are part of the problem. They don’t value the driver’s time — it’s nothing to them. They’re slow to load/unload — unlike in Canada, where drivers are compensated for time spent waiting at a shipper. Canada is way speedier and more innovative in getting drivers on their way.
The driver is poorly treated, poorly rested, with a very tough schedule to keep. The hours of service regs are meant to benefit the driver’s health and fitness to drive, but can mean cutting his/her available hours to drive and make a living, because time spent sitting around not making money still counts against their working day.
I wish the individual drivers had more say and judgment in scheduling their workload but then you’d have unscrupulous companies and employers exploiting them without a mandated rest period.
Do you want roads full of exhausted truckers driving massive vehicles 80+ hours a week? It seems a lot of the industry is fine with that. They’d like to blame a toxic system on the drivers.
I am real curious about the Wal-Mart driver’s situation.
John Revolta
Aside from this being one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard anyone say, I wonder what this fuckhead would be saying if the truck driver had run into a busload of, say, polo players?
Aimai
@Elizabelle: there was a good diary about this over at dkos last year. By a long distance trucker. He described in detail what youve just said so neatly. Its a terrible system.
J R in WV
Professional drivers’ time on the road has been regulated for decades. For Tucker not to know this speaks to his complete detachment from reality. Does he know what brakes are? No. Then shut up talking about something he knows nothing about.
Vehicular homicide has been a thing for decades, since cars got fast enough to kill someone. If Tucker doesn’t know this his license (should he have one) should be revoked. Perhaps he has a limo and driver carry him around always? That’s the only excuse for his pig ignorant discussion of driving law and homicide.
That said, drivers are paid most often by the mile, or by the tons delivered. Either of which gives them an incentive to drive too long, and to overload giant trucks, and to not stop for a couple of days while their brakes are maintained.
I can’t type well right now (5 am anyone?) so I’ll get back to this in the morning… Ha.
Botsplainer
If you read Fucker’s shrug-off while remembering the book Tobacco Road, it all becomes clear.
The part I’m thinking about is the cross country travail in the new Model T that Jeeter ruins through recklessness and neglect. They come barreling down the road stupidly, wreck into an old black man with a mule cart, and leave him for dead alongside the road.
Jeeter’s line was thus:
Delivered with a shrug and fatalistic expression, of course.
To Fucker, the dead guy was just a nigger, to be barely noticed. To Fucker, Tracy Morgan is just a nigger whose recovery is incidental. To Fucker, what’s really matters is the WalMart bottom line and the feelings of the white good ol’ boy trucker, whose whims about how he does his deadly job are sacrosanct.
Elizabelle
@Botsplainer: Wal-Mart’s truck driver is also black. And a fan of Tracy Morgan and the other comedians, for all we know.
Sad story from Tobacco Road. Have not yet read that.
====
Another point about truck driving: one friend said she thought crashes were up this year because you’ve got newish drivers out in freak weather. Climate change hitting the trucking industry on several fronts. Bears watching.
Elizabelle
@Aimai: I’d be interested to see that diary. Thanks for the head’s up.
Aimai
@Elizabelle: sorry i couldnt link im on my phone.
Botsplainer
@Elizabelle:
Ah, I’d not seen that about the driver.
Carlson wouldn’t have been so reflexively defensive had he known that.
raven
We had a similar wreck here two weeks ago. The state was mowing on highway 316 and a pickup slowed down when the mower swerved onto the roadway. A Wal Mart truck slammed into the pickup killing the driver. It probably should be noted that Wal Mart is likely to have more wrecks since there are so many of their trucks on the road.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
If the driver was rostered so that he went 24 hours without sleep, that sounds to me like Wal-Mart could be legally liable.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Why are bears interested in trucking issues?
Botsplainer
Speaking of douchecanoes, a bishop didn’t know that screwing kids was a crime.
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/archbishop-robert-j-carlson-claims-he-was-unaware-sexual-abuse/article_4215ecea-3409-53b3-813b-545c81a1b793.html
Anne Laurie
@Botsplainer: All the news reports have been stressing that it was a Wal-Mart truck. I suspect Carlson honestly doesn’t understand why a big corporation shouldn’t be allowed to use its worker-components to their fullest, and when they maybe fall asleep and kill a few people, well — collateral damage, but that’s why there are actuaries making tables of acceptable loss ratios. In Carlson’s mind, it’s not a crime, it’s just an industrial accident.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
If only those guys could forget that homosexuality and abortion were sins in their dogma, we could end a couple of longstanding debates in this country.
Botsplainer
@Anne Laurie:
Ford Pintos and exploding gas tanks.
Amir Khalid
@Botsplainer:
That is clearly a man who doesn’t understand the “plausible” part of “plausible denial”.
raven
Well this is fun. Mika is fucking hysterical about Hillary saying they were broke when they left the White House and it was hard for them to get back on their feet. I mean she is raging so much even Joe is calling a halt.
JPL
@raven: Wouldn’t it be fun, for you report on Fox and Friends? You seem to have the stamina to endure an hour of bull.
TheMightyTrowel
@Baud: Oh god. it’s not just me. I stared at that post for easily 2 min thinking, ‘Why the fuck are bears involved?’
barbequebob
This case most likely revolves around issues of professional drivers working in/for a system that does not allow them to get the rest they need to drive safely.
In addition, on a personal or non-professional level, it is the reponsibility of any of us who drive a car or truck to be in a physical condition that allows us to drive safely (i.e. awake, alert, sober, etc.).
Why does Tucker Carlson not think people who drive have a personal responsibility to be in a physical condition to do so safely? I thought conservatives were big proponents of personal responsibility?
Botsplainer
@barbequebob:
Personal responsibility, like shared sacrifice, is for the little guy.
People need to shit on the grave markers of Jean Calvin, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan daily.
TS
@Amir Khalid:
Couldn’t agree more – the companies set impossible schedules – and then say “how terrible” when something like this happens.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: Being from CA, I’d add Howard Jarvis to that list.
ETA: The taxi passenger in Airplane!.
Amir Khalid
@raven:
They did have the millions in legal bills from Whitewater and the Monica Lewinski thing — incurred at a time when Hillary was in an unpaid position as FLOTUS, while Bill was in a government job that didn’t pay all that much compared to a lawyer in private practice. This was mentioned at the time, as I recall.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: POTUS was paid only 250K when Clinton was President, Shrub the DimSon was the first to get 400K.
NorthLeft12
Life is not fair. Obviously something is wrong with me. If I were to say anything that was half as stupid and clueless in public as the Tuckster, I would be laughed out of the conversation and ridiculed relentlessly.
I blame it on the intelligence level of my family, friends, and co-workers. I need to find a more ignorant group of people to hang around with. Anyone know when the next RWNJ meeting is?
mai naem
So 5 American soldiers got killed in Afghanistan. Anybody want to guess when FOX is going to blame the five released Taliban detainees for this situation?
NorthLeft12
@Anne Laurie: Yes Annie, because industrial accidents [when people die and are horribly injured] are not criminal in any way, they are just bad luck, God’s will, a series of unfortunate events that are completely unpreventable, or the fault of the gays.
I always taught my kids not to “hate” anyone, but geez, I hate these guys.
BD of MN
I’m a truck driver, and at least in the midwest, Walmart is one of the relatively good guys. They pay their drivers better than average, they drive nice, new equipment, they are real sticklers for safety rules, they have electronic logging, so you can’t run multiple log books and work past your daily limit. Do they utilize every possible minute of the 11hr driving/14hr on duty rules? You bet they do, but they also pay close attention to the 10hrs off duty requirements too…
Since the spokesperson said they believed that the driver was within the hours or service rules, I’d be inclined to believe them. But what the driver does on his mandatory 10 hours off duty, is not something Walmart can control…
You can go search any trucking company for their safety record here, Walmart’s DOT number is 63585. In over 5600 inspections, Walmart was cited for an actual HOS violation once. That puts them in the top 0.5% of all carriers…
Don’t get me wrong, they’re still evil, but in this case they have decided that staying in compliance with the law is their ticket to cost savings…
OzarkHillbilly
@barbequebob:
BWAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAHA…. gasp…. wheeze….
10,000 unemployed comedians and here you are giving it away for free.
Botsplainer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Mid to late 70s, everything really seemed to transition from progress to shit, didn’t it?
another Holocene human
@Amir Khalid: Exactly. But by weakening hours of service regulations just as the science has caught up and confirmed that truckers and air pilots should have been on the railroad regime all along, it makes it easier for companies to put it in a driver. .. they were distracted, under the influence, they had sleep apnea, diabetes, narcolepsy. Then there’s the old we didn’t tell them to drive 24 hrs ( we just cut their pay if they don’t).
The Teamsters lost, wages were crushed, and the industry has changed with rising fuel prices. Thegovernment can keep us safe with strong, evidence driven and enforced HOS.
Collins can be terrible because she doesnt represent a state with huge OTR volumes On the highways.
C.V. Danes
Because when people fall asleep every day, they do so in a bed that is stationary and doesn’t usually weigh several tons.
Idiot.
Gindy51
Do you honestly think that anyone would be so dismissive if the accident had been caused by an airplane?
Botsplainer
Am in a Facebook argument with a local pundit who used to work with my. uncle at the Courier Journal over Fournier’s latest piss dribble on how unnamed senior Democrats are furious with Obama over Bergdahl – all completely unsourced. He knows Fournier and trusts his reporting, I’m pointing and laughing.
glasnost
I don’t see the problem with Tucker’s remarks, if the point is that it’s sad when unmalicious, nonaggressive biological reaction that’s an easy mistake to make, made by many, ruins your life and the life of someone else forever.
It is sad.
another Holocene human
@Elizabelle: Truck drivers today are barely a step above railroad workers in the gilded age. Sure, you’re more likely to die slowly of high blood pressure than quickly in a so-called accident, and today’s truckers can read and write, but on the other hand the old railroads hadn’t thought of forcing their employees to be independent contractors and to take on systemic industry risk by making downpayments and leading the equipment they drive.
OzarkHillbilly
@NorthLeft12: A few years back I was working on a job where the carpentry sub-contractor, pushed pushed PUSHED PUSHED!!! If you couldn’t keep up, you were gone.
One day, one of their carpenters managed to roll a man-lift while installing windows on a building with a sloped yard. Now, it is not supposed to be possible to drive one of the $100,000 machines over a certain inclination as they all have limiters. The limiter on this machine had somehow or other been disabled. Wonder how that happened? Oh, and the carpenter who rolled it and somehow or other miraculously survived (he really should have been dead or at least in ICU for several months with massive internal injuries)? He got laid off a week later.
This is the same company for whom an apprentice was climbing a ladder with a nail gun, some material, and a level, (hands are full, wonder how he held onto the ladder for 3 points of contact at all times?) when he somehow or other shot himself with a 16 penny nail thru the stomach and into his liver. Nobody could figure out how he did that seeing as all nail guns are now mandated by law to operate only when you push down on the safety at the nose of the gun and then pull the trigger. Funny how by the time the Corps of Engineers showed up to investigate the gun had mysteriously, accidentally, disappeared! Wonder how that happened??
So you see? Sh!t just happens! That’s what insurance is for!
Betty
An old, sad story about truck drivers being overworked and being a danger to the public – bot heavens no, don’t think about better regulation or holding the companies responsible. This goes way back with th courts supporting the lobbying to ensure this never changes.
I have long advocated more use of the railroads for long hauls, but that is also a big political mess with the trucking industry taking advantage of publicly maintained highways while the railroads have to maintain their own facilities. This country is on the wrong track!
sm*t cl*de
If only there were some way to find out these elusive and abstruse details of legal doctrine. If only there were some way of paying media journamalists to do some basic research and looking-stuff-up, so that they are not forced to front up to the camera and devote broadcast time to a description of the extent of their ignorance.
Perhaps the laws are different in the US, but in my country, yes, there is a legal requirement that people driving a car must be awake while they do so.
Anton Sirius
@raven:
To be fair to Mika’s hysteria, it was a completely fucking stupid thing for Hillary to say. Nobody’s going to believe it, or have any sympathy for her even if it were true.
Maybe she should swap “dead broke” stories with some of her campaign volunteers, and see how they respond to her tales of woe, scrimping and saving just to get Chelsea into Stanford.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty: Pun intended I presume? :-)
Anton Sirius
@barbequebob:
At a guess, I’d say either he or a family member have killed someone with a car and (so far) gotten away with it.
Olivia
@Botsplainer:
Those jerks just assume the driver was white because only white people have jobs in their heads. Once they realize the truck driver was also black, there won’t be another word about it.
Black driver + black victim = no problem.
Anton Sirius
@Botsplainer:
Lanny Davis is still technically a Democrat, isn’t he?
kc
I guess I’m “horrible,” because I wax surprised by the charges as well.
lorimakesquilts
@Elizabelle: You are so right about the ridiculous regs and general antipathy towards drivers. The same kind of crash happened right in front of mother-in-law’s house. They really don’t stand much chance of avoiding these kinds of situations what with all the crazy regs they have to deal with.
Memphisj
@BD of MN:
Thanks for posting this BD. There’s a post over at Huff where several commenters are clearly truckers or in the industry saying the same thing, whatever you think of Walmart their trucking group is among the best, pay included. While I can give Walmart the benefit of the doubt until the facts are in it’s not surprising that they’re taking heat, it’s really their own fault given how they treat their retail and warehouse workers.
currants
@raven: So, how many more before Walmart decides outsourcing its trucking is cheaper? And then….
Suffern ACE
@Anton Sirius: I know what Tucker did last Summer.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I just did a series of depos in a case where I’m suing a subcontractor for binding up a mast climbers. My guy is masonry and allocated 10 for the job. Site rules were that only my guy’s people (who were trained and certified) could operate them. Others could access the platforms, but would have to get my guy’s folks to raise or lower.
The moisture barrier’s people refused to stay away from the controls, and were chased off of them multiple times the first day. The second day, the bound it up – 2-3 feet off level across an 80 foot span – the manufacturer had to fly in a tech to safe it, it was red tagged, roped off, and disassembled for shipment and evaluation. Turned out that the base had been twisted and needed to be squared again.
None of them were certified or trained. The foreman and the company president both testified that they viewed manufacturer recommendations and the specific OSHA regs as hindrances, and denied that anything went wrong with it, discounting the report of the GC, the manufacturer’s analysis and testimony of 3 third party vendors.
Hell, the foreman even climbed around on the thing while it was red tagged in order to take pictures of it, and mocked his lack of authorization.
MattF
Missed the thread about Will. I’ll admit, I had that that very last, lingering nanoscopic bit of non-contempt for Will. I mean, he once wrote a book that someone I don’t despise once said something non-negative about. But that, as they say, was then.
kc
@Anne Laurie:
Wal Mart wasn’t charged. The driver was.
kc
@kc:
Was, not “wax.” Damn phone.
Botsplainer
@kc:
The driver being charged can give Wally World a potential out – it was an ultra vires act for which they bear no responsibility.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: It is possible the truck drivers are not “employed” by Wal-Mart but are “technically” outside contractors. The muddies the situation. They may spend almost all their time driving for Wal-Mart but they still aren’t employed by Wal-Mart. It’s cheaper for Wal-Mart this way.
bemused
Tucker is a libertarian or quasi-libertarian condescending ass born into privilege and elitism.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: The Carpenters Union (and others too) has certification classes for all equipment. Nobody is supposed to be on one w/o such certification. When ever I got hired on by a new contractor I always brought in all of my certification cards on the first day so they could copy and put them in my file (which they always promptly lost). The last company I worked for (a General contractor) even sent me to a job once because I was certified for all terrain fork lifts and none of their people on the job were and neither was the roofing sub. It was all about the insurance of course. They don’t want bad things to happen, that they will have to pay for.
It always comes down to the money.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
This sub doesn’t even keep copies or records of certifications of their employees. My guy was amazed as to how they keep insurance – he’s very rigid about that.
Lee
@BD of MN:
Thanks for that information.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Yeah, so was that GC. It is funny how much that sort of thing varies across the industry. The CDC is very big on certifications because it allowed us to justify the higher pay for the very reason of lower workman’s comp rates. About 10 years ago the CDC implemented a new policy that every carpenter had to take at least one safety certification course each year. I have a whole shelf of books from various certification courses, everything from scaffolding to rigging to 30 hour OSHA.
Cassidy
Long haul trucking should be eliminated completely. The lack of care and due regard employed by truckers is disgusting and dangerous. Speeding down the highway with many tons of cargo, lane changing without a care in the world, and an overall sense of WATB entitlement is a recipe for disaster.
danielx
Once again, my man David Brooks confuses the right/Republican Party that exists only in his mind with real live conservatism. Here’s the money line:
Because local governments (which ones?) have been so effective at addressing national economic issues and trends, of course. Would that include, for example, the state government of Tennessee, which felt so strongly about issues of income inequality that it (in the form of the governor and Senator Bob Corker) interfered in a unionization vote?
David, your columns may make sense in the Village but out here in the provinces where people have to deal with the real consequences of fucked up Republican policies and philosophy, they’re generally (with rare exceptions) suitable for fish wrap or lining the bottom of canary cages. In that imaginary world that exists only in your mind, Republicans are actually interested in addressing things like income inequality. Out here in the real world, Republican attitudes generally run more along the lines of ‘always kick a man when he’s down, it gives him incentive to get up’. Your disregard of reality is sort of the inverse of purity trolls like Nader supporters. In the words of one eminent philosopher, grow the fuck up. The Party of your imagination – and its leaders and economic backers, to whose buttocks your lips are so firmly affixed – doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed for oh, four decades now.
Gin & Tonic
@MattF: he once wrote a book that someone I don’t despise once said something non-negative about
That should go in the dictionary for “damning with faint praise.”
schrodinger's cat
A few years ago I lost an acquaintance in a similar accident on the Beltway. She worked in husband kitteh’s lab and had just finished her PhD and was going to start a post-doc at the NIH.
Gin & Tonic
@PurpleGirl: The trucking industry has been the Wild West since the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 (thanks, Jimmy Carter!) Look at the side of any truck cab as you pass it and see if you can figure out who the business really belongs to.
Not saying WalMart is doing this, as I don’t know, and have been out of that aspect of the insurance business for some time, but the various “leased to:” and “leased from:” arrangements have certainly been an employment opportunity for fraud investigators.
Kay
It just sounds like boilerplate, vaguely libertarian rhetoric to me. He’s really just a lazy person, Tucker Carlson.
The answer to any question is: nanny state, open the market for innovative truckers, reduce entry costs to the trucking occupation, I’m a contrarian even though you’ve heard this same thing 5000 times, blah, blah, blah.
Paul in KY
@Anton Sirius: IMO, it was a tone-deaf comment.
Liberty60
I recall a scene in Tale of Two Cities, where a nobleman’s carriage careens wildly thru Paris, and runs over a child. The nobleman leans out his window and tosses a few coins to the distraught parents.
I honestly believe that George Will and Tucker dream of such a world, fondly.
The rest of us dream of what followed.
rikyrah
Hundreds Disenfranchised By America’s Worst Voter ID Law
[….] Arkansas is one of a smaller number of states that also insists that absentee voters prove their identity. Its law requires that the absentee ballot be sent in with a photocopy of a valid photo identification or “a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter.”[….] If a ballot is rejected for lack of valid ID, it lacks any option for the voter to have his or her vote counted.[….]
At the urging of Secretary of State Mark Martin (R), the Arkansas
Board of Election Commissioners attempted to fix this omission by
regulation, allowing the same period for rejected absentee voters to
prove their identity. But the Pulaski County Board of Elections
Commissioners objected to this as outside of the board’s legal purview — and both Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (D) and the state Supreme Court agreed.[….]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/06/09/3445559/arkansas-voter-id-absentee/
srv
Boy, you people sure put the nazi back in liberal.
Truckers have to work insane hours just to get by, and one falls asleep and all y’all can think of is burning the guy.
It’s a sad day when Tucker Carlson has more compassion than liberals.
RaflW
Yet again, the party of personal responsibility rears it’s ugly head and says “Shut up, I meant personal responsibility for welfare queens, not WalMart truckers who have to drive exhausted. That, well, whoucouldaknowed? Why is he responsible?”
F*ckwads.
RaflW
First rate troll, there, @srv
I might be persuaded to give the trucker a break if a WalMart exec takes the fall. I agree that the trucking industry has forced drivers to take risks to keep their jobs, but that means the system has to be changed … which all the big businesses like WalMart vigorously oppose.
Elizabelle
@srv:
Ugly comment. Not even factual. No one is heaping scorn on the driver. More the system that puts him behind the wheel, exhausted. And pretty much guarantees he remains exhausted. And not well paid for the hours he/she commits to the profession.
Uglier thought: drivers get burned to death in real life, when they or someone else falls asleep or causes a collision.
I thought that immediately of the Tracy Morgan accident: thank Dog there was no fire.
Villago Delenda Est
Collins needs to be removed from office. At once.
This is insane. The worship of Mammon is totally out of control in this country.
Elizabelle
@BD of MN:
Interesting comment. I did not know Wal-Mart had a strong safety record, or that it paid its drivers (relatively) well.
Scandal here is the race to the bottom in most of the trucking industry. Drivers used to be able to support a family.
If I may ask, do you drive for a small company, large company, or yourself? Over the road, or local, or regional?
Cassidy
@Elizabelle: In the Paul Walker crash, the car caught fire.
rikyrah
does anyone have a news feed to Steve Benen’s over at Maddowblog. that page just doesn’t act right for me anymore.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: In the wee hours of the night, I mentioned to Anne Laurie that the link to benen no longer worked, and I gave her the new one. She fixed it right away. yay!
If you click the link in the blogroll, you’ll have the right one.
Stupid, stupid MSNBC. How I loathe their incompetence with their website.
liberal
Some young woman in MD fell asleep at the wheel crossing the Bay Bridge. Trucker died as a result.
AFAICT, she faced no criminal punishment.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
There was another Beltway incident where some guy from Canada was going around a curve and some stuff (logs?) came off his truck, fell off the overpass, and killed some middle-aged guy driving underneath.
liberal
@Kay:
Well, re regulation in general, thank God Obama’s in office and has shut down negotiations on the TPP, which will make regulating anything even harder.
Oh, wait…
MattF
@liberal: Falling asleep while crossing the Bay Bridge is actualy quite a feat– there’s people who find the crossing terrifying and hire people to drive them across.
LAC
@Anne Laurie: Carlson wouldn’t understand shit if he had stepped in it. He would miss his hands clapping. It is like the official preppy handbook threw up. Why is he still on tv?
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle:
IIRC Pennsylvania closed every rest area on every interstate and turnpike. I seem to remember some mutterings about this being a backhand swipe against Teh Yoonyuns (truckers being stereotyped as all Teamsters or some such) but that could just be my bad memory of the event.
But Free Markets!!11!1!, so any truck driver who doesn’t like the insane schedule his employer keeps him/her on or the total lack of supporting infrastructure can just go find a better employer/occupation. (/snark)
BD of MN
@Elizabelle: I drive locally for a national LTL freight company. Not sure where “here” is, but up in MN, it’s an employee’s market, not an employer. My company gave me a $5k hiring bonus, and even with that out there (and wages well above union scale) we’re still short drivers. The ND oil boom probably has something to do with it, if you want to really work your ass off, you can make well into 6 figures driving a truck in the oilfields… (there are definite downsides to it, but the payday is there too…)
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ll grant one thing: if this had been a rental moving van, I’d say ten years for falling asleep might be a bit harsh. But for an owner of a CDL? It should be a good start – and the person for whom they are contracting should be facing an investigation and getting the ever-loving bejesus fined out of them, and if they were aware that other drivers had had accidents caused by short sleep, it should put decision makers at risk of jail time too.
(“The person for whom they are contracting”… no one *hires* drivers any more, they force them to take contracting jobs, to eliminate liability.)
liberal
@MattF:
Yeah, I’d heard about that.
ThalarctosMaritimus
@Baud: Why are bears interested in trucking issues?
Krispy Kreme and Rainier Beer trucks.
sm*t cl*de
To be fair to Carlson, he can’t be expected to see anything wrong with someone falling asleep on the job when that is his own normal working state.