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Time to reconsider
Monday’s fatal accident involving an automobile, a farm tractor and two tractor-trailers on Chester Gap heightens a controversy which has been brewing for some time -- in fact, since the Highway Department banned large trucks from a narrow section of Route 17 in Fauquier County.
Ironically, one of the major considerations leading to that ban was an accident involving a tractor-trailer and an automobile which claimed four lives. Supervisor Hubert Gilkey clearly spoke for all of Rappahannock’s residents Tuesday when he said that “(we) can die just as easily as Fauquier County citizens.”
The answer, however, may not lie in an either/or choice. In recent years the federal government, bowing to pressure from the transportation industry, has loosened regulations to allow longer and heavier rigs on the highways.
At the same time, budget constraints and deregulation of the industry has decreased the number of inspectors as well as their authority. The result, as recent reports by AAA and other organizations points out, is an epidemic of oversized, overloaded and too often poorly-maintained tractor-trailers riding the nation’s highways.
The possibilities are frightening enough on interstate highways, where the lanes are larger and the flow is more constant. On a narrow, blind curve in Rappahannock County the consequences of combining large trucks and a farm tractor, operating apparently within the law on a public highway, were graphically and tragically demonstrated Monday.
Not fifty yards from that spot another southbound truck recently lost its brakes and ran across the northbound lane and into a field. Fortune smiled that time -- no one was coming up Chester Gap and the truck driver was not seriously injured. Fortune, like the sun, was hidden by clouds on Chester Gap Monday.
Supervisor Gilkey was right — to a point. The question is whether such vehicles should be allowed on ANY county’s “narrow, two-lane roads,” and if so, who is responsible for assuring that they adhere to safety regulations and highway laws.
Certainly trucking is vital to the movement of commerce in the country, and most truckers are responsible operators. But the trend seems clear: More trucks are involved in more serious accidents. Perhaps the time has come for Washington to reconsider the wisdom of deregulation. Does the savings in dollars justify the cost in lives?
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