OCR Text |
Show DANGER ON THE HIGHWAYS Last March, the Interstate Commerce Commission Bureau of Motor Carriers, Section Sec-tion of Safety, issued a report on brake per formance of commercial vehicles which fully deserves the description "startling." It shows that the brakes of an incredibly high percentage per-centage of these vehicles are definitely unsafe. un-safe. The tests were made with a standard machine for determining brake performance. All of testing stations were located on ppved roads with not over one per cent grades where a large volume of traffic is carried. The bulk of the vehicles were tested with loads. Approximately 1,700 vehicles were tested, and here is what the inspectors found: 1. Busses made the best showing. Even so, only slightly more than 50 per cent were able to meet the I.C.C. stopping requirements a stop within 30 feet at a speed of 20 miles per hour. 2. Only 42 per cent of loaded 2-axIe trucks were able to meet this requirement. 3. Tractor-semitrailer and truck-full trailer combinations generally showed poor braking performance. Only in the lowest weight classes (under 20,000 pounds gross vehicles) did performance even closely approach ap-proach the I.C.C. standard, 4. As a rule braking performance decreased de-creased as gross vehicle weight increased. The exception to this was busses where weight increase caused little change either way in braking performance. Suppose that half of the railroad trains were permitted to operate with brakes less effective than the law demands! That seems to be the rule with vehicles which use our highways for commercial purposes, according accord-ing to this report. And their brakes grow poorer as their weight increases, therefore their potential danger increases. It is true that the better bus and truck lines keep their equipment up to standard at all times. But the percentage of commercial commer-cial motor carriers below standard is inexcusable. inex-cusable. The man who drives his car on a a public highway is entitled to know that the commercial vehicles he meets are mach-anically mach-anically safe. Something should be done and done right now about the findings of this report. |