Rollovers: Preventable or Not?

I got into a spat with a driver on the CB after I passed a rolled over truck and made a comment, something like I didn't know you could drive them that way. Anyway, this belligerent, sexist unidentified man seemed to think I was terribly out of line for making such a comment.

I have little remorse for drivers whom clearly were the cause of their accidents through inattention or reckless behavior. In fact, rollovers are in themselves almost indefensible most of the time, I can only think of a handful of reasons a roll over would be non-preventable, most of which are mechanical. This particular rollover occurred in Arkansas on I-30 in the middle median. The truck was rolled, what I call gently on its side, that is the trailer and truck were 90% intact, and it appeared flipping it right up would be sufficient for it to drive off. The front of the truck was a bit mangled where it had nose dived into the dirt, but it was intact.

All wheels intact.

We all know some of the common causes of roll over.

Speed, Inattention, Following to Closely, and the more rare Load Shifting

I'd like to discuss situations in which a roll over is not the drivers fault. The one that immediately comes to my mind is a steer tire blow out due to road debris or some other issue BESIDES tire wear. Aside from this most other mechanical causes of roll over should be noticed in a pretrip.

Then there is the fourwheeler, bus, other truck, and so on that pulls in front of you suddenly and hits the brakes. Now in this instance I am sure the company would still go preventable because they want you to stop the truck not roll it over, but gut reaction of most people when faced with slamming into another vehicle is to swerve.

It is my general belief that 90% of roll overs are completely preventable. Because most are caused by the first three things I mentioned previously. Speed, usually speeding well above the speed limit or well above safe speed for the driving condition. Or too fast around a curve, or offramp.

In attention, where you are looking for a soda, a fallen chip, on the phone, or QC and look up to see you are veering off road, and either fail to correct on time, or overcorrect.

And Following too Closely, this one is the one I see waiting to happen the most often. People ignore the following distance rules and ram their front ends near up a slower moving trucks behind before moving over, or while that slower moving truck is passing another even slower moving truck as if their tailgating is going to push them to go faster. Both cars and trucks doing this. Everyday. And when that car or truck hits the brakes for whatever reason and you have left your self 2 feet stopping room, your gut reaction is to swerve, and boom. Either way though you would be screwed, you either hit them, and in the case of a car take another person's life because they were going a bit slower then you wanted to go and you couldn't back the hell off for a few minutes. Seriously people, stop tailgating, I swear to god one of these days I am going to start mailing your companies videos of you driving like this. Sorry for the tirade but it drives me nuts to think someone might kill my family members being impatient and reckless.

So what other reasons can you come up with where a roll over is non-preventable?

 

Winds are one I hadn't thought of, I've seen youtube videos of such.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_ybMvQZBMI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf-F8AvQqOQ