Horrible crash in Lakewood CO, I70 closed both directions. 12 vehicles 4 semi huge fire

I still want to know what accredited driving school gave him a license and training. He's from Cuba. They don't have roads like we do. Putting a 23 year old in a commercial vehicle under these circumstances is criminal. A lot of explaining needs to be done.

 

So your saying that you can take the CDL test and/or endorsements in Spanish, at these locations, against the FMCSA regulations??

 

I'm not a huge fan of pulling the race card either, but these 2 posts are both accurate. I can't tell you how many times I've delivered in Houston, San Antonio, Austin etc etc, and ran into drivers that spoke zero, I mean ZERO English. Those same folks 9 times out of 10 are running ragged out equipment which isn't safe either. Don't even get me started on the end dump guys in the area that's a whole different story. ####ty equipment, and dumping on uneven ground, moving too fast etc. What I'm saying is, I've run into many of these cats from Mexico, cuba, etc most of which spoke very limited, or no English whatsoever and the common trend between them was, buy an old POS truck, run paper logs, run as MUCH as possible, very little sleep and they did things in manners most would consider very UNSAFE. Hell I used to run some oversize concrete up 35 from time to time and ran into many guys that would run 12 hours during the day, sleep an hour, then run all night. All from cuba/mexico. They thought it was the greatest thing. Are they all like that? No, but I can tell you right now, those folks do things differently, and it's not always in a good way. Seen it too many times up close. Terrible situation all around.

 

My first solo load was to Golden Colorado followed by a pickup in rifle. Load was max 44k gross was 78. A little common sense goes a long way in the mountains. I learned alot from drivers on here, without the things I've seen on this forum I probably would of ended up in a runaway ramp myself. I blame the companies for not going into depth with training on mountain driving. I find that the hills in Virginia are way worse than i-70. You got those 12% downgrades in PA short but tricky. Those terrify me.

 

Clearly the truck was a FL Century. Smh

 

At first glance it looked like a white volvo and nobody would be surprised if it was.. Sue me

 

I would not be surprised if they were. There was around the 2001 time period a beginning of a increase in spanish speaking truckers among other languages on the road. I have no position about that one way or another because english is still everything in the trucking world. In the signs common to mountain grades etc.

There are several grades on I-70 before Lookout eastbound, Steamboat, Vail, Eisenhower etc. I don't remember them all but it's a series. I think this relatively small 6% grade for several miles was the last straw from bad driving the previous grade or two perhaps. It's just a thought. I wasnt there so I don't know. I can only make wild guesses based on experience.

Here is one with a B train at 144K on a 18 speed. He runs the initial down grade well enough, at the 2:50 mark the upgrade is 10% and he's down splitting in the low range doing battle soon enough.

 

I had to look at the frame by frame and found it to be a possible century, certainly newer model year than mine. But I don't blame anyone for thinking volvo etc.

 

If that last vid was him he will be convicted of vehicular homicide as he made the decision to bypass the runaway truck ramp and try to ride it out.