Brake Failure on U.S. Truck Caused Crash

[rocktivity]

Brake Failure on U.S. Truck Caused CrashAssociated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - A road crash that triggered deadly anti-American rioting in Kabul occurred because a military truck lost its brakes...

(A)...military spokesman...in explaining the cause of the traffic accident, said the truck's brakes "apparently overheated and failed" as it came down the long hill...

The truck hit several unoccupied parked cars in an effort to slow, but it wasn't enough and the truck hit occupied vehicles at an intersection, he said.

What was the driver doing, riding the brake? Who puts an intersection at the bottom of a steep, long hill? Was there a stop sign at the bottom of it? And what happened to the traffic jam? Was the traffic moving SO slowly that some people pulled over and parked? Yeah, right...

:eyes:
rocknation

[leftchick]

1. It isn't just the accident that caused the riots...

Juan Cole weighs in....

<snip>

Bush's Iraq imbroglio, or "Bush's Furnace," as history might well call his trillion-dollar purchase, has sucked up money and resources on a vast scale and left US personnel in Central and South Asia to struggle along on the cheap. Afghanistan defeated the British Empire in its heyday twice, and is not an enterprise that can be accomplished without significant resources. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Monday's riots in Kabul, in which altogether 14 died and over 100 were wounded and during which thousands thronged the streets chanting "Death to America", also produced violent attacks and gunfire throughout the city, with hotel windows being sprayed with machine gun fire. The protests were sparked by a traffic accident. But they have other roots.

The US military presence in Afghanistan has quietly been pumped up from 19,000 to 23,000 troops.

A fresh US airstrike in Helmand killed some 50 Afghans on Monday Over 400 Afghans have been killed by US bombing and military actions in only the past two weeks. While most of these are Pushtun nativist guerrillas (coded by the US as "Taliban"), some have demonstrably been innocent civilians. (Taliban are, properly speaking, mostly Afghan orphans and displaced youths who got their education in neo-Deobandi seminaries in Pakistan and were backed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. It is not clear that those now fighting the US in southern Afghanistan are actually in the main Taliban in this technical sense.)


http://www.juancole.com/

[boobooday]

2. It sounds plausible to me

More so than a lot of stories from the Department of Defense.

Brakes could definitely overheat on a big truck going down a long hill, and it is common to have intersections at the bottom (or top) of a hill in hilly areas (see San Francisco).

Is this contradicting other stories about the incident? It doesn't really seem suspicious to me . . .

[rocktivity]

4. Oh, it sounds very plausible

I would expect it to--that's what spokespeople are for. My question is, is it THE TRUTH?

:headbang:
rocknation

[boobooday]

20. Well, there is just no way to know with these people, is there?

Your best bet is usually to assume they are lying.

But in this case, it's hard to tell.

[Ripley]

3. Another LIE.

All reports coming out of Kabul are that it is ON FIRE! Rioters have overtaken the Parliament building and the US embassy. This is one more example of how the Corporate Media LIES over and over again to the American public. And frankly, I give this post five minutes before the apologizers will weigh in to call me a Conspiracy Nut and that the poor soldiers really did have to fire into the crowd killing and wounding 60 people after their *ahem* brakes failed. :eyes:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. Do you have a link to the information on Kabul?

I'm having difficulty finding much but an AP piece that's been passed around all over.

[Ripley]

13. One below and here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/29/115926/261

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Nothing there about parliament or the embassy, though

The Daily Kos link lead to Al Jazeera. It talks about fighting in the streets, and a curfew, but nothing about rioters taking over parliament or the US embassy. They do seem to have demonstrated outside them though:

Protesters vilified the United States, marching through the streets of the city to the gates of the National Assembly and U.S. embassy, but President Hamid Karzai was also criticised.

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-05-30T151647Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-251894-3.xml

US embassy staff were moved somewhere safer, it seems.

[Ripley]

14. Another eye witness account from Kabul:

http://interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1289

This morning, when the first television report appeared on the US convoy accident that resulted in several fatalities, a Scotsman in the guesthouse immediately blamed the "trigger-happy American soldiers." He lamented that "this latest US gunslinger incident would set back the Europeans' effort to reconstruct" this war-scarred country.

In fact, Afghans often complain about the high speed and aggressive driving of US military convoys in Kabul. The US military responds that these driving tactics are necessary to protect their troops from attack. That is a response that only increases the feeling among Afghans that the US military is dangerous to their health.

Last week, a young man lectured me on how US troops cannot be trusted. He pointed to the recent US bombing in southern Afghanistan that he said left 34 civilians dead, including several small children. "The US military kill and don't care," he said.

Increasingly, there is the perception in Afghanistan that the US military is out of control, that it shoots first and cares little about the Afghan people. A teenager who works in a copy store told me, "We want your help, we need your money and knowledge to remake Afghanistan, but we don't want your military."

How the Hell can You blame these people for not offering the troops Flowers and Chocolates?

[Union Thug]

5. The first rule for dealing with info from a military spokesperson...

is NEVER BELIEVE A WORD OF IT without multiple sources of corresponding evidence.

I don't think they mentioned the angry protestor that accused the driver of being drunk, did they? I don't necessarily take that at face value, either, but it's just as plausible as the official story.

[snooper2]

6. This is in Kabul...

Not L.A., The road system there is not, um, up to standards...

[Ripley]

7. Yeah.

So that gives American soldiers the freaking right to blaze guns into a crowd of civilians (again) and kill/wound hundreds? What part of that story do you not understand is WRONG? Afghani's, like Iraqi's are sick and tired of Americans going "off" and killing civilians on a routine basis these days.

[snooper2]

16. I guess you were there?

From what I read all of the damage and rioting was done by Afghans. The same Afghans with some of the worst human rights records in the World. I guess in your mind they are all just innocent farmers...

"During the rioting, an Associated Press reporter saw several demonstrators pull a man who appeared to be a Westerner from a civilian vehicle and beat him. The man escaped and ran to a line of police, who fired shots over the heads of the demonstrators. Other Westerners escaped the protesters by driving at high speed and refusing to stop when the rioters tried to block their way."

[Ripley]

18. Read Much?

The MSNBC link I provided clearly states the DOD is going to investigate because even though the Military spokesman LIED again and at first said they only shot over their heads, uh huh, they have enough eyewitness accounts that American Troops shot over 100 civilians. I suppose You also apologize for the cold blooded Marines who shot little kids in the head execution style in Haditha. In their homes. Nice.

Funny how people like You show Your racism in such a manner as to turn it around on me. I never said all Afghans are innocent farmers. Hell OBL was one for awhile. Oops. Our military guys were his Teacher.

[snooper2]

29. I tend to wait till other confirmations..

And yes, Haditha is horrible and will come out, and we should have never been in Iraq. Afghanistan is another story...People are raised to hate there, and now we have spread that Talibanish hate to Iraq.

I didn't see any videos of Marines spraying crowds of civilians with AK47s.., but I did see many hundreds of Afghans causing havoc, destroying cars, shops, and everything in sight....I did see videos of hummers and other military equipment racing through the streets, and I would have done the same thing if 12 year old kids are throwing moltive coctails at me.

[yellowcanine]

8. Driver should have shifted to a lower gear before going down hill.

But my guess is maybe he didn't do that because the area is not secure and he wanted to proceed as fast as possible. Also - a heavy truck like that should be equipped with a Jake Brake (engine brake) so there is not as much dependence on friction brakes. It sounds like a combination of poor training and maybe inadequate equipment, as well as poor operational planning that put the truck in that situation. Can't do much about the intersection at the bottom of a steep hill but you can make sure not to send a heavily loaded truck down the hill at rush hour.

[Wickerman]

10. well-stated! n/t

[Xithras]

17. Jakes are often not used on military vehicles.

Why not? Because they're LOUD, and military vehicles often don't want to announce their presence in a potentially hostile neighborhood. Anyone who's been around trucks knows that Jakes can be heard for miles in rural areas.

[yellowcanine]

28. Jake brakes can be activated or deactivated so this is a lousy reason

for not having them. Many towns will have signs "No Jake Brakes". Does that mean trucks having them can't travel through the towns? No, it means the Jake brakes have to be turned off. There is no excuse for not putting Jake brakes on a heavy military truck. Gunfire is loud also but that is no reason not to give the military guns.

[happyslug]

32. Not on 5 ton nor 2 1/2 ton trucks

But do exist on higher trucks (To my Knowledge) but 5 ton and 2 1/2 ton trucks do have Mechanical-Air Brake systems (See my comment below on such systems). When I drove Trucks for the National Guard we NEVER had a truck go bad do to brake pad failure. When we did have failures it was Air Brake line blockage or Master Cylinder failure. As I noted below these are also rare.

[CanSocDem]

27. Considering....

...that the trucks were put to use without adequate armour, it's not hard to imagine that general maintenance would be a low priority.

[Ripley]

9. Another Link

"“There was a traffic jam and all the vehicles were stopped,” said one witness, 21-year old shopkeeper Mohammad Wali. “The American convoy hit all the vehicles which were on the way. They didn’t care about the civilians at all.”

Patience with the 23,000 U.S. soldiers and other foreign troops in Afghanistan is also fraying over recent deaths of civilians, including at least 16 people killed by an airstrike targeting Taliban fighters in a southern village last week.

The risk of civilian casualties appears to have increased amid some of the deadliest combat between security forces and militants since U.S.-led forces ousted the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13027759

[onager]

12. I could bore you for hours on this one...

Since I used to help develop interactive training on military vehicles, including the brake systems. To develop the software I had to understand how the brake systems worked, since I was creating interactive schematic diagrams of the systems.

I haven't seen a mention of the specific vehicle, but I'm assuming this truck was either a 5-ton (M923 series) or 10-ton (M977 HEMETT series).

Brake "failure" is pretty rare on those trucks. They have a dual air brake system just like big-rig trailer trucks. i.e., air brakes, backed up by spring brakes. A real mechanic, which I am not, can explain it better. But basically, if the air brake system fails, the system is designed so that the spring brake automatically engages and stops the truck safely.

According to some Army reports I had to read in my job, the biggest problem with the brake systems was the drivers. They tended to panic and lock the brakes, forgetting how dangerous a fully loaded 10-ton vehicle is in a skid. (You can find those reports on the web, or at least you could a few years ago.)

To counter that, the Army was retrofitting all its trucks with anti-lock brake systems (ABS). Just like the ones in your Toyota, only bigger.

I think the Army ran out of money for those retrofits around March 2003...

(EDIT FOR POSTER ABOVE: you're right. All these trucks have Jake Brakes. You're probably also right about the poor training in how to use them, though. At the risk of repeating myself, training budgets have been slashed since March 2003, too.)

[Xithras]

22. Here's how they actually work.

The braking system on a car is a positive pressure system. Your brake shoes "rest" in the retracted position and there is no pressure in the braking system until you press the pedal. Pressing the pedal pressurizes the system, forcing the brake shoes against the drum (or rotor if you have disk brakes), which stops the car. When you take your foot off the pedal the pressure is released, permitting the car to roll again.

The braking system in trucks works exactly the OPPOSITE way. Large vehicles including commercial trucks, busses, and construction equipment use a negative pressure braking system. These vehicles have large, powerful springs which hold the brake shows against the drum and lock it when there is no pressure on the pedal and the vehicle is off. When the vehicle is started, the driver pushes a button that pressurizes the braking system. This pressure counters the spring and releases the brake. When the driver presses the pedal, the pressure is released, allowing the spring to once again apply pressure and stop the vehicle.

The system used on large vehicles has several advantages over the one used in cars when it comes to safety. The biggest advantage is that if the engine or pressure fails, the vehicle is automatically going to apply the brakes, since the removal of pressure will once again allow the springs to stop the tires. Since heavy vehicles often have exposed brake lines (they have to, because the trailers are detachable), these failures happen fairly often and it's usually the spring brake that saves the driver from a terrible accident.

The thing is, none of this has anything to do with the accident described in the story. While it's unlikely that the braking system failed, the brake shoes themselves are a whole different story. When a brake shoe overheats, it loses its ability to generate friction and stop the vehicle. When that happens, it doesn't matter HOW MUCH pressure you apply to it, the vehicle is NOT going to stop....and ABS isn't going to do a thing to help. In fact, continuing to apply the brakes will only make the problem worse, and usually leads to the brakes catching fire (at which point the driver is REALLY screwed). The only way to regain control is to STOP using the brakes for a minute or two to allow them to cool, using your engine to slow the vehicle as much as possible. And if the road is too steep or windy to permit that? Look for something soft to hit!

FYI, I grew up in a truck driving family, and I was driving my uncles Pete long before it was legal for me to be doing so (mostly hauling tomatoes, which is the s#*t work of the trucking industry). I lost my brakes once coming down the Altamont Pass, and while I didn't crash, it was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life.

[KansDem]

25. "Since I used to help develop interactive training on military vehicles.."

Perhaps you're the best person to ask this: I would think that the most powerful nation in the world would have a motor pool that routinely checks and repairs/replaces systems such as the brakes. My brakes can go out on me (and have!) since due to costs, I usually wait for something to happen before I have it repaired. It would be nice to practice preventive maintenance, but I simply can't afford it. However, I would think the US could do preventive maintenance on a routine basis. In doing so, wouldn't a potential problem with brakes be discovered before they cause an accident like this? Or doesn't the US practice "preventive maintenance" on its vehicles? Is there even a "motor pool" any more or is this job outsourced?

[rodeodance]

19. The underlying tension and spontaneous eruption of protests/violence

is what The US should be consentrating on.

[Xithras]

23. Yep, that's the REAL story here.

Big rigs get into accidents all the time in the US, and it's not uncommon for many people to die in the process. Just this morning a semi slammed into two cars near my house, seriously injuring the passengers in those cars.

Guess what? NOBODY RIOTED! There was no underlying tension or animosity toward the truck driver, so nobody used it as an excuse or as the last straw to vent their frustration or express their grievances against his employer.

If a simple car accident can cause this kind of reaction, it can only indicate that there are some serious tensions in Kabul right now. This accident let a little bit of it vent, but it means that we have some serious problems in there.

[rocktivity]

26. DING DING DING! Xithras, you're our grand prize winner!

If a simple car accident can cause this kind of reaction, it can only indicate that there are some serious tensions in Kabul right now.

If it really WAS an accident, it almost goes without saying that the reaction to it is a symptom of a bigger disease. It shows that what passes for Desert Storm democracy is a veneer so thin that it takes only a pinprick to unleash the real hatred and rage underneath. This is the outcome of "don't say that publicly, or you'll undermine the effort." What DOESN'T get said doesn't just disappear--it just gets expressed in a different way.

:headbang:
rocknation

[doc03]

35. I agree with you on the cause of the riots, I just

can't believe that the military ran these people down on purpose as some on this board are insinuating.

[daleo]

21. This sounds like a cover story

We have heard from other sources that it is U.S. (and other foreign troops) policy to blast along at high speed, for fear of IEDs and ambushes.

[jwirr]

24. No matter what happened to cause the accident the real lesson

is once again that we are not wanted in that country any more than we are wanted in Iraq or Iran.

[Igel]

30. And, in typical fashion,

to punish the US they loot and burn shops and beat people.

Or maybe the press isn't savvy enough to discern a difference between the looters and those owners whose shops are looted/burned? Rather like LA in April '92: lots of shops burned, but unless you asked or were aware of the differences, there was no pattern.

Then again, the tension-raisers have been at it again and the public square ceded to the haters, from recent reports, and nobody's willing to call them what they are.

[happyslug]

31. Someone did not bleed the Air Brakes the night before?

When I was in the National Guard we ran 2 1/2 ton trucks with air brakes. Now these were NOT prue air-brake system, but a Mechanical Air Brake system (if you lost Air pressure in a pure air brake system you had NO brakes, in the Mechanical-Air brake system you have SOME brake if you lose air pressure).

Why would an Air-Brake system fail? Sometime if water gets into the system. How does water get into the System, when you compress the Air for the Air brakes. How do you PREVENT the water building up in the system? You bleed them after every use (Not after every ride, but at the end of the day). If the air system failed is was probably do to water blockage of the air lines do to failing to bleed the brakes the night before.

But the army trucks tend to have Mechanical-Air Systems, not pure Air systems. Thus it is rare for an Army Truck to lose its brakes do to Water Blockage (and when it does occur the Driver still has SOME BRAKING ABILITY do to the Mechanical parts of the brake system). Coming down a hill the brakes COULD fail do to Water Blockage but the driver would know it as he hits his brake and could warn others (And be careful what he hits, enough to minimize damage or at least to avoid lost of life when the Truck HIT the other Cars).

Now the Mechanical part can also fail do to loss of hydraulic fluid (Mostly if the master cylinder goes). I had a master Cylinder go on me once in Fort Drum in the mid 1980s, I was in the Ammo Dump at that time loading Ammo for my Artillery unit. The brakes started to go and I FELT IT GO BAD but I still had enough brakes to get out of the Ammo Dump and to a location to unload my truck and gets its brakes repaired.

My point you just do NOT lose brake power all at once (Especially in an Army Truck with its dual brake systems, in civilian trucks you do hear of it for most big rigs are air brake systems only NOT the combination Air-Mechanical the Army uses). Brake lost is felt as you apply the brakes and you either lose fluid or air. You feel it go down. You then take appropriate action (Including hitting your horn and yelling at people to get out of your way do to losing your brakes). One such action is to DOWN SHIFT (and most Army Vehicles since the 1980s are Automatics so this is easier than in my days when I drove a Standard). All you have to do in an Automatic is move the lever to 2nd or low and the TRANSMISSION WILL ACT AS A BRAKE (In fact most truckers to spare their brakes tend to use low gears when going downhill rather then rely on their brakes, especially a steep hill).

Thus my problem with this story, I just do NOT think it is a Brake problem that caused this accident, but a deliberate policy of ramming anything that gets in the trucks way. That makes more sense than losing brakes (and I have to say this MOST people know the difference based on how the Accident happened).

[doc03]

33. So now an accident was a crazy American soldier's

fault for deliberately running down civilians. In hill country around here we have sand piles and runaway truck ramps for a reason (sometimes truckers lose control of their vehicles on a hill). There is a ramp on the interstate here where dozens of trucks have lost control and wrecked over the years and I'm sure they knew how to drive. I know a driver that was killed when he lost control of a heating oil truck on a hill and was burnt to death he had 20 years behind the wheel.

[happyslug]

34. Those army Trucks are Geared MUCH lower than Civilian Trucks

If you lose a brake on a Military truck you are NOT going anywhere near what a Tractor-Trailer would be going down the same hill. I once drove a 2 1/2 ton truck down Allegheny Mountain on The Pa Turnpike and NEVER was able to get it pass 60 (and that was done ONLY by putting it in Neural and DRIFTING down the Hill). Army trucks are designed to go cross-country and thus have MASSIVE Transmissions to propel it over muddy fields. As I pointed out they have Mechanical-Air Brakes NOT a Straight Air Brake system of most large rigs on the road today.

Altogether it is RARE for an Army truck to lose its brakes AND HIT ANOTHER VEHICLE. The Army Trucks start to slow, if in gear, the Army trucks max speed is to low and you have various ways to slow down the vehicle IF YOU GET INTO TROUBLE (like losing your brakes). Military Trucks are NOT Civilian Tractor-Trailers (Through some Civilian trucks are used by the Military, that is NOT claimed by the Article and the Army do NOT tend to use them in Combat Zones do to the restrictions on the use of such Civilian Trucks based on the Civilian Trucks Design for Maximum Speed over PAVED Roads). I just do NOT see the US Army using Civilian Trucks in Afghanistan, thus we are discussing Military grade trucks and their MASSIVE transmissions and Braking Systems. I just do NOT see these trucks losing their brakes AND speeding up so fast that they hit a car and kill someone. I can see the Truck pushing a car out of the way (Through the contact will be with the front trans-axles NOT the Bumper for 2 1/2 ton truck bumper was HIGHEr than the top of most civilian cars) but not at a speed to kill the occupants UNLESS the truck was traveling at some sort of Ramming speed (and such speed would have to be the result of negligence maintenance, which I doubt, or a deliberate policy of NOT being caught in a Traffic Jam let you be hit by a bomb along the side of the Highway).

My point is given the various different ways you can slow down an Army Truck WITHOUT TOUCHING THE BRAKES and the dual nature of the Braking system, losing the brakes AND hitting an occupied car is almost impossible. IF the brakes were lost going down the hill all the driver has to do is double clutch the transmission to a lower gear and that will slow the truck down enough so that any impact will be minimal.

One last comment, when a Civilian Trucks hits a car do to losing the Trucks brakes, the Driver of the Truck is Guilty of Manslaughter (Or in Same State Vehicular Homicide). Thus while you see the sand piles on the side of the road, these rely on truck drivers doing everything they can to slow down the Truck First. My point is even if this was an Accident (Which I doubt) the driver is STILL GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER for he is to have control of his truck at ALL TIMES. Losing one's brakes does NOT relive one of responsibility to control that Truck. The law puts this burden on the Truck Driver FOR HE IS IN THE BEST POSITION TO MAKE SURE HIS TRUCK IS IN TOP RUNNING CONDITION. If it is NOT, the Driver has the Right to SAY HE WILL NOT DRIVE THE TRUCK. THis is true in the Army, if a Army Truck driver decides the truck is unsafe to operate he MUST says so and NOT operate the Truck (If he does and someone is Killed it si Manslaughter). If the driver's officer still orders the driver to drive the truck, the Driver must get that order in Writing for then if something goes wrong the Officer goes to jail not the truck driver (I had to do this once with a truck that was deadlined we had our Captain sign off on the operation of the truck but while the Truck was "Deadlined" it was "Deadlined" around a problem we could work around and did, but if anything had happened my Captain AND I would have been sharing a cell).

My point is the operation of the Truck is the problem here and something is wrong here.