On a routine Monday afternoon, a rightfully angered driver called me in the WSB 24-Hour Traffic Center. Granted, the jam he had ventured into was not unheard of. Problems block lanes all the time on I-85/northbound near Jimmy Carter (Exit 99) in Norcross. His response, upon finding out about this center lane stall, was more flustered than normal. Basically, this driver barked, “Improper car maintenance! How much should this driver get fined for inconveniencing everyone?”
Let’s explore this notion together. Considering what happened on I-285/westbound in Sandy Springs nearly two weeks ago, the question is pertinent.
A tractor trailer scraped and critically damaged the Mount Vernon Road bridge over I-285, shutting most of I-285/westbound down for hours and shutting that bridge down permanently. The Mt. Vernon bridge was already set to be replaced by a new one being built adjacent to it. The new span will not open until 2024.
Channel 2 Action News went over the report of infractions for this truck and driver; the laundry list was eye-popping.
The truck, which was carrying a heavy piece of equipment that included what looked like a boom for a crane, was approximately four feet higher than the legal limit. That explains the heavy bridge damage.
There were ten broken rules in total that ranged from a lack of certain safety devices, to leaking grease, to an improper modification of the frame.
The Motor Carrier Compliance Division report cites the driver, as opposed to a particular trucking company. There could be several reasons for this, including that the driver is independent and owns their truck.
I spoke to someone in the trucking industry about the line between what trucking companies, drivers, insurance companies, and the local governments pay for in these situations.
Basically, a driver is responsible for making sure their load is the right size and properly secured and gets the fines and tickets for such. The damages to the bridge are covered by the trucking company’s insurance.
According to this industry source, some trucking companies are self-insured, so the damage cost comes out of their coffers. Imagine having to suddenly pay for a bridge. Smaller companies, they said, likely have outside insurance coverage. A catastrophe such as a huge spill or structure damage would skyrocket their premiums and potentially keep the insurance company from renewing the trucking company’s plan.
Professional drivers can obviously lose their jobs or be written up when they make mistakes.
But has the threat of job loss or the cost to the trucking companies significantly decreased the amount of truck crashes?
Now, to our WSB Traffic Troopers assertion about fining drivers: that is complicated. Drivers are already ticketed and fined for reckless driving or being at fault in crashes. There are also several laws about vehicle maintenance on the books in Georgia. Those do not seem to prompt enough people into proper behavior.
But could the state pass a law and begin increasing fines on drivers, based on the delays or inconveniences they create? Ideally, this would be great. But what would the ceiling on those fines be? Would the amount of miles, the number of people caught, or the number of minutes of delays created be the determining factors in such a penalty scale?
Some policy makers want to see the gas tax changed to a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax, since cars are becoming more efficient and are decreasing the revenue needed to maintain roads. This would require some sort of tracker or GPS technology in vehicles. So, potentially, the same kind of gizmo could also calculate the delays that an errant driver causes.
So what if a driver makes one poor lane change and triggers a rollover crash that shuts down most of a freeway for two hours? A collection of tracking devices could determine, for example, that 5,000 vehicles sat through an average of 30 minutes of delays each in this melee, for a total of 150,000 lost minutes. If this hypothetical law for time lost had a one dollar per minute penalty, that driver would get a $150,000 fine.
Does that seem like a burden too heavy to bear for making an improper lane change? It does to me. And I feel that way if that penalty were even a tenth of that total.
And I am not sure that it would really deter many of us from being poor drivers or auto owners.
Another objection would be about who gets the bounty from this hefty levy. If that six-figure sum just goes into the government coffers, that does very little to help the actual drivers who were stuck at that fateful time.
Could those tracking devices in each car somehow ring up a small total for anyone that drove by? Maybe, but the bureaucracy that would create could be burdensome. And can’t we all imagine the kind of fraud a “Pay the Delayed Driver Fund” would create?
I could imagine people hearing about and purposely choosing to sit in a jam, if it meant they got an extra 30 bucks. A dollar a minute? That sounds like a deal!
This is not meant to swat away the idea of making fines and license points stiffer. Drivers need to take more ownership of their commutes, whether they drive a passenger car or a tanker truck. Driving is not a right; it is a privilege.
Insurance companies foot (or should) the bills on the big costs and premiums continue rising. But driving IQ continues to decrease.
While the idea of punching people in the wallets for all the delays they cause sounds good, it seems too flawed to implement.
The best thing we all can do is to start driving as if our mistakes could cause calamity. If we treated other peoples’ time the way we think of our own, we just might turn this gravy tide together.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. Download the Triple Team Traffic Alerts App to hear reports from the WSB Traffic Team automatically when you drive near trouble spots. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.
About the Author
