DON'T KEEP ON TRUCKING
	MARCH 2004

by David Piepho
Photos by Brad Shifflett

I've had a personal interest in Hwy. 4 safety issues since September 2001. On that date I had the most important involvement possible, since I was involved in a head-on collision on the Hwy. 4 curve near the infamous J4 (Byron Highway) junction.

The accident occurred because the other driver was distracted by something inside the car and for just a moment drifted across the centerline. Neither of us was speeding, but at 55 MPH the closing speed of our two vehicles was 110 MPH. At that velocity, and coming around the curve, I never saw the other car even though I was paying careful attention to my driving. I had the sensation of driving down the road one moment and lying in a rescue helicopter the next.

BACK FROM HELL
Even though I am a firefighter by profession, and have been on the scene of more terrible accidents than I care to think about or remember, I was unprepared to play the role of victim myself. My long road to recovery filled me, at times, with a terrible impatience. My helplessness and the seemingly insurmountable challenges posed by my broken body threatened to overwhelm my resolve. There were episodes during that period of time when I despaired of ever being restored to health.

I must admit, in all humility, that my recovery was expedited, or perhaps even made possible, by the prayers and support of family, friends, and even acquaintances. It seems to me, when looking back on that time, that the most important element in my recovery was supplied by several people who belonged to the"Been There ... Done That ... Got the T-shirt ... Hated it Too," Club.

I had never before met some of the people who came by my bed to share with me their testimonies. One man who had received the same kind of injury as mine from falling off a roof told me,"You're going to be OK." A fire chief from San Ramon visited me and told me,"I broke both my legs and recovered. You will too." I felt at times that the only way I could hang in during this period was because of the reassuring words from these guys. They were like lifesavers thrown to a drowning man.

Now I have recovered to the point that I have carried a 200-pound man on my shoulders down three sections of a fire ladder and am back on the job driving a pumper as an Alameda fireman. Nevertheless, 12 screws connect a titanium rod to my leg bone. The discomfort of this will serve for the rest of my life as a prompt, encouraging me to do whatever I can to make things more safe.

FROM SUFFERING TO ACTION
A direct result of my accident was to galvanize me and a number of concerned citizens and local politicians to improve the safety of Hwy. 4. The initiative began with a call I received from Senator Torlakson who, at the end of the conversation asked,"What are we going to do about this problem?" It was a good question. Obviously, I had a lot of time on my hands during my recovery, so while lying in that bed I began to formulate a response to the Senator's question.

After investigating the possibilities, it occurred to me that we could develop a safety program for Hwy. 4 on the East County side similar to the Franklin Canyon Road/Hwy. 4 improvement project that was coming to an end at that time on the West Side.

The Franklin Canyon Road project had been designed to improve the safety of the two-lane stretch of Hwy. 4 in the Hercules area just South of Hwy. 80. That stretch was expanded to four lanes last year so we were able to transfer the project to our part of the road. The safety corridor now in place on our stretch of Hwy. 4 is one of only 11 in the State. It covers the stretch of road from Brentwood to the San Joaquin County Line.

As part of my research for the project, I traveled up and down the length of the corridor taking pictures of all the crosses that had been erected along the side of the road. The experience of viewing all those crosses aroused within me the terrible realization that they all represented levels of tragedy extending far beyond the loss of the individual lives.

The lost lives are terrible realities all by themselves, of course. But beyond that, each of those crosses represents many people whose lives were tremendously diminished, or even shattered, by the terrible event represented by each of those small memorials. I became even more committed to doing something to stop that awful carnage.

IMPLEMENTING CHANGES TO SAVE LIVES
We began the project right after the first of the year, when Senator Torlakson's staff called a meeting that included me, representatives from the Highway Patrol, County traffic engineers, CalTrans representatives, and our Supervisor, Donna Gerber. I attended the meeting while still in my wheelchair, which provided a visual stimulant helping everybody understand the importance of this.

The result of that meeting was that together we laid the initial foundation for a program we called Drive4Life. We determined to back legislation to create a safety corridor between Discovery Bay and Brentwood. We determined that the corridor would include a number of initiatives, including:

• Designate this stretch as a head lights on section
• Designate this as a double-fine zone
• Remove the distracting billboard signs
• Deal with the problem of truck traffic

The first two initiatives were most easy to implement. I'm happy to say that we accomplished our purposes at that point with great effect. In the first nine months that the safety corridor program was in effect, the number of injury accidents fell from 22 to only 10 compared to the same period in the previous year. Best of all, the number of fatalities fell from three to zero, during that same period of time. Zero is a good number! Zero is the right number!

SIGNS OF PROGRESS
We are still working on the signs and trucks initiatives. Taking down the distracting signs and billboards turned out to be much more difficult than we imagined. I've had to do a lot of work with county code enforcement because the signs were posted contrary to county codes governing these things, as well as contrary to CalTrans regulations.

In each case we have to identify and then locate the owners of the signs and the owners of the property that they are on. Once CalTrans gets that information, they can then contact the individuals involved and, finally, take the steps necessary to have the signs removed.

We finally were able to remove 15 of these signs from the area around the scene of my accident. Now we are working on the signs that have been posted near the intersection of Hwy. 4 and Sellers Avenue.

We really don't have quantitative research showing how much effect roadside signs and billboards actually have on traffic safety; we are intuitively certain, however, that these things have the ability to distract the attention of drivers, which is always dangerous when driving on a 2-lane highway.

THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS WITH TRUCKS
The final initiative that we identified remains almost completely untouched. A problem that all of us have who drive that highway, whether night or day, is created by the enormous number of trucks that travel that road.

For example, when the media came to take pictures of me standing by the accident site, the reporters were astonished by the number of trucks that kept passing by. At one point representatives from the media took pictures of five large trucks lined up one behind the other waiting at the light, together with just three automobiles.

All of us are irritated by the local construction vehicles that keep clogging our roads, but for the most part we are willing to put up with them as a necessary cost for all the development going on around our area.

However, the annoying truth is that most of the trucks that come barreling through our intersections, crowding up behind us, and jamming our roads don't fall in the local construction vehicle category. The majority of these are long-distance freight haulers that are using our little 2-lane rural road as a short cut to get to their far-away destinations.

MONSTERS HURLING DOWN OUR LITTLE ROADWAYS
Walking along the road when one of these enormous trucks comes by makes you particularly aware of how fast these trucks are moving, as they rock you with a storm of wind, dust, and debris that they constantly tow along in their wake.

Another annoying problem is created by the stones that the trucks throw up. How many of us have had to replace windshields in the past four years, who have never had to replace a windshield before in our lives? Most of the stones are dropped from unprotected loads carried by the double-bottom gravel trucks that chase each other up and down the roadway.

Then when other trucks run over the pieces of gravel lying in the roadway, their 18 huge, often poorly guarded wheels throw the stones through the air with sufficient force that, when added to the speed of the car, they become flying projectiles that easily crack a windshield.

Another problem with the trucks is the racket that they make going by at 60 MPH.

Even in my home in Discovery Bay, it is difficult to sleep on warm summer nights with the windows open because of the intermittent din created by the trucks passing by on Hwy. 4 all night long. And we are at least three blocks from the highway!

LARGE ENOUGH TO KILL
The most dangerous thing about these trucks, perhaps, is their sheer size. My accident occurred while I was driving a Civic and was struck by someone driving an SUV. I spent a week in the hospital and was in a wheelchair for three months. I had to learn how to walk all over again. The doctor assured me that the deployment of my airbag was the only thing that saved me.

The driver of the SUV, on the other hand, was uninjured. Since the 5,400-pound SUV was twice as large as my 2,600 pound compact, the driver was protected by the difference in the size ratio between our two vehicles. The laws of physics rule that at twice the weight, the other vehicle had four times more force in the impact than my vehicle did. I didn't have a chance.

The problem of differing size ratios means, of course, that the chance any of us have of surviving a collision with one of these 50,000-pound trucks falls to an effective zero. The impact by one of these trucks on my car is over 300 times the force of impact by my car on the truck. As a result, I get killed in any head-on collision with one of these guys, while the Johnny Cash CD the driver's playing doesn't skip a track.

Adding to this problem is the grim reality that, when traveling the Hwy. 4 corridor, we can't really stay away from the trucks. On a 4-lane road, we are able to distance ourselves from the 18-wheel and double-bottom behemoths that share the road with us, but Hwy. 4 doesn't provide even the smallest margin for error. Four feet off the side of that road and we end up at the bottom of some slough. The narrow roadway forces us to go into harm's way. That bothers me!

THE GRIM FACTS
The fact is that trucks are simply dangerous to be around. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that large trucks have higher fatal crash rates per mile than passenger vehicles, even though the trucks spend a much higher percentage of their travel on interstate highways, the safest roads of all. Obviously, the danger is much higher when those trucks are on our narrow Hwy. 4, which might be a candidate for the least safe kind of road. One obvious problem big trucks have is increased breaking distances. A large, fully loaded semi-truck takes as much as 40 percent more distance to come to a complete stop than a passenger car stopping from the same speed. And that's only if the truck has safe brakes. In 1996 random inspections of trucks were carried out and 29 percent of the trucks stopped had serious vehicle defects, more than half of which involved problems with brake systems.

Here's another scary way to look at the problem of truck safety: Only 700 people are killed who were riding in large trucks, compared to as many as 3,700 deaths of people riding in automobiles involved in accidents with trucks. In other words, more than five times as many people are killed while riding in cars that are involved in accidents with large trucks than are killed in the trucks that those cars collide with.

NASTY, DEADLY FREIGHT
To make a bad situation even worse, an astonishing number of big trucks are hauling hazardous materials down Hwy. 4. As part of my fire fighting profession, I've had training as a Hazard Materials Specialist. I can tell you that I'm continually amazed by the number of molten sulfur trucks that go down that highway every day. Other trucks, of course, are carrying pesticides, petroleum products, and who knows what other substances that constitute potential disasters just waiting to happen.

I served for a time as a member of a County Disaster Planning Committee. We examined scenarios that tried to model the possible outcomes of these large trucks overturning while carrying hazardous materials. We considered the evacuations that such a disaster might necessitate.

The scary problem we encountered with some of these scenarios is the potential for an accident creating a need to evacuate communities while at the same time shutting down the single egress route that people would require for the evacuation. In the worst case scenarios, people would become trapped with no way of fleeing the disaster threatening their lives.

If this ever actually occurred, politicians would doubtless seek remedies including controlling the inappropriate movement of hazardous materials down that road. This would be the traditional way for improvement to take place — politicians responding to outcries following a catastrophe. However, this time let's be proactive and put remedies into place before people are killed in some awful disaster.

A TERRIBLE SUSPICION
The most disturbing part of the problem of the trucks coming down our little road is the awful rumor going around that many of these giant trucks are taking this route simply to bypass the scales on Hwy. 580.

So added to all the problems we've been talking about — the trucks are too large, too dangerous, too numerous, and carrying too much hazardous material — is the truly disturbing suggestion that some of these might be doing all this while driving overweight and/or seriously out-of-compliance with industry safety standards.

I learned that Mike Davies, Chief of the Brentwood Police Department, may be formulating a plan to use portable scales as a way of removing the temptation for these truckers to bypass the law at such great inconvenience and danger to us East County residents.

Mike would do this as part of his Commercial Vehicle Enforcement program, which is carried out by his Traffic Safety Unit. The program is delayed, Mike says, because the Highway Patrol has put the necessary training on hold due to budget cutbacks.

SEARCHING fOR APPROPRIATE REMEDIES
There are two sides to the problem of trucks on Hwy. 4, of course. We realize that the owners and operators of the trucks that go through here need to make a living. But we citizens need to be heard, as well. We need to take appropriate steps to make the area safer.

The Caldecott Tunnel provides a model for the kind of action that we might take. A nightmarish accident occurred in 1982 in one of the bores of the tunnel involving a collision between a gasoline tanker and several vehicles. The tanker exploded killing seven people and resulting in legislation that now closes the tunnel to hazardous materials during daytime hours.

As with the Caldecott Tunnel, we need to restrict truck traffic and hazardous materials transportation through our safety corridor, but we need to try to make this happen without requiring a disaster like the one in the tunnel.

Over the next several months we are going to collect some information to help us make the decisions about these things. What chemicals are actually transported through the corridor? Molten sulfur has a lot of dangerous properties. How much of this is actually going through here every day? Why ship this stuff through here, in the first place? Can't hazardous materials be shipped over more appropriate routes?

Working on the Taskforce that is implementing the Hwy. 4 safety corridor initiatives has provided some closure for me, giving me a way to make sense of the terrible thing that happened to me. Whenever a person becomes victim of some event that was out of his or her control, the alternative to despair is action, trying to re-establish some measure of control and apply some remedy to assure that the terrible thing doesn't happen again, or doesn't happen to others.

Statistically, the work of the Taskforce has already saved lives and has dramatically reduced injuries. People are alive today who would otherwise have been represented by new crosses that by now would have been erected in their memories.

The awful condition of traffic on our East County highways is no secret. We can't do everything but we can do something. We should remain dedicated to the tasks of making our highways as safe and pleasant to drive on as possible.

I've been working to make conditions better. I'm looking to see what else can be done so that what happened to me on that curve that day won't happen to others.

I've always believed that we should serve each other and serve our communities in whatever ways we can. Bringing something good out of something horrible.... Maybe that's the best service of all.