Fox News said according to the police report, the truck lost it's brakes while exiting the interstate. If that's the case, the truck driver did a hell of a job with the situation....split the two 4-wheelers at the intersection (as opposed to smashing into either one of them) and tried to make the left hand turn....load shifted, truck flopped over....NOBODY injured in the crash.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/172613921...or-gas-station

Originally Posted by CommDriver

Yeah, if he did lose his breaks you could fault him for maybe not catching it on pre-trip, but would have to agree about a heck of a job not killing anyone there.

My truck is in the shop today. Brakes were working fine all day on Friday until I was about 8 miles from the house. The light changed ahead of me, and I had enough time that I SHOULD have been able to stop. I applied the brakes, but it was acting as though I had reached up and grabbed a handful of the hand brake lever. The trailer locked up, but the tractor brakes weren't doing anything. Luckily, there was nobody in front of me, I was in the right hand lane, and the side street controlled by the light was off to the left....so I was able to proceed through the intersection unscathed.

When I got home, I dropped the trailer and test drove the truck back and forth in the driveway. The tractor brakes weren't doing anything with less than 40 psi on the application gauge. I crawled under the truck...plenty of pad on the shoes, drums weren't cracked, no grease or oil contaminating the drum or the shoes....everything LOOKED good and no air was leaking. I dropped the truck off at Mack Saturday morning, and during the test drive with the mechanic, I had the application gauge reading 50 psi and it still didn't feel like I was stopping any better than I would normally stop with only 10 psi while bobtailing. 50 psi SHOULD have put us through the windshield.

I'll be heading down to see what they discovered shortly...and hopefully be able to get back to work tomorrow with fully functioning tractor brakes.

Point is, just because a problem was not evident during your pretrip does not mean it will not develop during the course of your shift. Parts don't typically wear out or break while the truck is parked, but rather while the truck is in use. The brakes on the truck in the video could have been working flawlessly all day, providing no indication of anything being wrong....right up until he hit the top of the ramp and attempted to slow/stop and discovered the brakes were no longer functioning as they should....at which point you've got to do the best you can to minimize injuries and property damage as you try to handle the situation.

Looked to me like he was going a bit too fast on the off ramp, (velocitization?) and the SUV stopped at the corner when he wasn't expecting it to. When I watch it, it looks like he swerved some to miss/graze the SUV at the last second, instead of proceeding into the left turn as wide as he would have. That jerk, instead of a smoother turn is what may have made that happen. (AND his speed) That observation may the result of the video clip playing faster than real life, granted.

http://screen.yahoo.com/us-runaway-s...-29918107.html