Walmart blows tires, driver was lucky, semi burned.

He can tell him whatever he wants and that's ok. You did say though "should have never let the guy under the trailer" that's alot different.

 

pro·tect
/prəˈtekt/
verb

1. keep safe from harm or injury.
2. aim to preserve (a threatened plant or animal species) by legislating against collecting or hunting.
3. restrict by law access to or development of (land) so as to preserve its natural state.

Very first definition is what he failed at. Simple fact is a cops job is the server and protect. Anytime they want more money (taxes) to hire more people it's all about safety. If they make safety their number one reason to exist, they have a moral obligation to provide that safety.

BTW, all the Supreme Court has ruled on is cops don't legally have to do their jobs. It has no bearing on them morally doing their jobs.

 

I know what the meaning of protect is.
Just because they justify their actions with word safety doesn't give them the right to stop the guy from trying to put out the fire in the name of safety.

 

While true, he could get his lazy behind out of the car and at least mention how bad an idea it is to get under a trailer on fire.

 

Indeed they can.
Last month I picked up one of our Utility trailers from the BNSF railyard in St.Paul,MN to go pickup a load in Gaylord,MN at MG Waldbaum. For those familiar with that neck of the woods while climbing out of Henderson on MN Route 19 about 10 minutes from Gaylord at some point one of the brake chambers let go,which started making the truck feel “sluggish”. Couldn’t pull off to the side of the road because MN Route 19 has short shoulders which aren’t wide enough for a semi to pull over safely,plus there’s no lighting(very easy to lay a truck over on that stretch)When I got to the MN-19 Truck Scale & Repair Shop on the outskirts of Gaylord when I turned I noticed the driver side wheels on the trailer had stopped turning. At that point I stopped the truck,lowered the landing gear and disconnected the tractor from the trailer and pulled that away. Went back to look under the trailer. The brakes were RED HOT,plus there was a fire brewing behind the brake drums(which was snuffed out quickly by both my fire extinguisher and the truck repair shop’s).
Lately in the past year there have been some QC issues with the Utility trailers in our fleet but mostly it involves the nut and washer assemblies on the tandem slide mechanisms which shear off,making it impossible to slide the tandems.
The trailer involved in the incident (one of our 23xxx series trailers) was only a year old. The trailer was quickly repaired and put back into service in less than 18 hours.

 

I had to bold this one sentence in your post, because that is not always the case. I drive a newer T680 and it's set up that when the jake brake comes on, the brake lights come on.

My brake lights could be on all the way down the hill even though I didn't touch them at all.

 

Really? I would never think of it being even legal. That's a new thing for me to know and of course changes things I said. You surprised me!

On the second thought, the jake brakes these days are powerful enough to slow down the truck quite quick, maybe this a good safety feature.

 

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of it.

 

My dad had a freightliner about 15 years ago that did the same thing I thought it was weird but figured it was because it was a camper semi

 

Utah has several places coming down steep hills where they prohibit engine braking. I wonder if that has anything to do with this incident. Also, for the drivers that think it's best to let your speed build going down hill, then apply brakes to slow down, and then release brakes and let the air cool them off, notice his brakes weren't sufficiently cooled by the rushing air at the start of the video. The physics formula concerning energy in the brakes is Kinetic energy equals 1/2 the mass of the truck multiplied by velocity squared. Put simply the energy/heat you generate by letting your speed increase is WAY more than you can quickly lose by short periods of air blowing past the brakes as you speed up again. A little speed increase generate a lot more energy. If you want to keep your brakes cooler, you MUST keep the speed low and not let it increase, such as by a slower road speed and enough engine braking to limit acceleration.