Truck owner raided over fatal accident caused by loose tire

Sunday 13th April, 04:31 AM JST

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Latest 15 of 17 Total Comments Show All

some14some at 05:15 PM JST - 12th April

All these maintenance related accidents are due to credit crunch or say sub-prime mortgage.
flammenwerfer at 05:43 PM JST - 12th April

Would you expect much more from a garbage disposal firm? doesn't surprise me in the least.
kagunlapell at 06:43 PM JST - 12th April

my father, a professional truck driver, had a similar case, losing a huge posterior wheel in the road. Fortunately, the wheel bounced off the road, and didn't hit any car at all. Whose fault was that? The guy changing the tire the day before, who 'forgot' to fast some of the screws. And here? well, I've seen cut screws, probably by fatigue. It's impossible the car driver can have noticed this, even if all the maintenance has been carried out properly. If the tires are too old, there's two guilty guys here: the owner, who pay the bill and avoid changing the tires, and the inspection (government), who doesn't put too much attention in pushing the owner to change the wheel.
VoXman at 08:06 PM JST - 12th April

kagunlapell

Well fortunately, there are experts in Japan that can determine metal fatigue vs. metal shearing caused by neglect or improper mounting of the wheel to the hub.
Desiderata1967 at 06:29 AM JST - 13th April

VoxMan...hahahahahaha...you said 'experts in Japan'....hahahahahah...you're funny!
robin_hood at 07:13 AM JST - 13th April

This sheister, the "60-year-old executive of the disposal firm", is pointing the finger of blame at the truck driver, instead of being a man and accepting responsibility for not keeping the firms equipment in proper order. Truck drivers are not mechanics and it is NOT their responsibility to ensure that their vehicles are road worthy (unless they're owners of the truck). That responsibility lies with the company.

My guess is that the driver probably did request maintenance on the truck long ago, but was told it was okay. All so the company can save a few thousands dollars on safety.

No, this is a prime example of the JN Bicycle police over-stepping their authority and investigating accidents as if they were crimes...

It's this kind of Child-Hood mentality that every time something goes wrong there is always someone at fault, it permeates japan with the frequency of people coughing without covering their mouths.

Sometimes accidents just happen, that's why they are called accidents and that's why driver's are required to carry insurance...

If this guy has had a history of accidents, then he's either going to be paying for the highest-risk insurance or he's no going to be driving any more.

Was it avoidable... Possibly... But then again it's entirely possible that this driver would have needed Xray or Ultrasonic inspection to detect these hairline fractures.

When agencies like these bungling bicycle police go around with this mentality that someone is always at fault 180% of the time for every single accident or incident that occurs, then shrug off their own wrong doings and dereliction's of duty...

What a crook of BS....

When this truck driver starts flying airplanes and carry 100+ passengers and then a tire falls off... Then it's time to assign a professional agency to investigate NOT the police.

This country is showing it's 12 year old mentality... over and over and over again...

Time to grow up people...
GrouchyGaijin at 09:35 AM JST - 13th April

Technically, a road accident in Japan is a breach of criminal law, as I was surprised to discover recently. But, if Japan's finest constabulary were to, say, arise from their well padded rear ends and actually do their job, law enforcement, two things might happen. First, by being pro-active, not re-active, we could prevent many of these kinds of incidents. Secondly, if they collected the fines for violations, we could easily pay off the national debt. But, of course, they'll continue to sit in their kobans, chain-smoking and watching police dramas on TV.
dat5h at 10:02 AM JST - 13th April

Having worked on a case like this in the US, I assure you this is not an issue where no one is to blame. Generally, screws actually need replacing after certain periods of time and the fractures on these screws are easy to detect and don't require serious investigations. Also, it doesn't say much about the type of failure and I hardly doubt that it was pure fatigue (possibly stress-corrosion cracking). This is a problem of a company trying to save a dime and waiting too long to inspect its vehicle. This is a sad dilemma that happens in this kind of business everywhere.
dat5h at 10:05 AM JST - 13th April

Oh also, it does say "rusty." This leads me to believe this was indeed a stress corrosion cracking problem. If this were the case ... it would have been detectable by simple inspection (just looking at it) for a month maybe longer.
conqueror_of_Uranus at 12:07 PM JST - 13th April

A specialized hammer (I'm serious) is used to check the bolts and nuts on wheels. I think it was called a "sonic tap" or something like that. The hammer works something like a tuning fork. It will not resonate if there are microscopic fractures in the metal or if the nuts are loose, as these break up the conduction of ultrasonic vibrations.
Smythe at 03:56 PM JST - 13th April

So much above is true. Still the RCMP in the Province of B.C., Canada have a limited number of devices they will be using. It can tell if one of the tires is woren on, can also tell if some of the brakes are not working properly to even telling if the bearings of one wheel are hot for various reason. Problem is they only have a limited few.

I am sure that the Japanese Police know of the above & if it is worth the cost to supply Police officers with them.

Basically we civilians know nothing about such a device that will easily spot an 18-wheeler with some such problems or running properly.
GrouchyGaijin at 03:58 PM JST - 13th April

The truck was an Isuzu. Look for hundreds of plain clothes officers wearing green armbands and carrying stacks of flattened cardboard boxes raidng Fuji Heavy Industries' offices sometime soon, all filmed from a circling helicopter. (Couldn't some of these box-carriers be redeployed to "prevention" detail, instead of mop up?)
rtrhead1 at 10:47 PM JST - 13th April

Robin hood, are you kidding? 2 of the bolts were clearly rusted, which indicates that they were broken before the time of the incident. I say incident, because when you have a heavy truck and improper maintnenance, an incident like this is bound to happen. This is actually one of the few traffic happenings that I've seen while I've been here that actually was someone's fault. It's called professional negligence on the company that owns the truck. It was and is their responsibility to maintain that truck, and in your opinion, if they don't and something bad happens, oh well, it's just an accident? You should be an inspector here. You have the mentality for it.
dat5h at 04:03 AM JST - 14th April

Oh, I'd also like to note that the inspection spoken about was not likely a government inspection. It would require hiring a significantly larger number of government inspectors that are trained in order to have regular inspections go smoothly. That is why most governments allow companies to inspect their own vehicles with their own mechanics at set intervals of time. Then every 6 months or a year a government inspector will look at the vehicle. That being said, if the company expects its drivers to give the vehicle a proper inspection they need to train the drivers or hire mechanics to have on staff. It seems neither of those were done and tragedy happened.
franz75 at 09:40 AM JST - 14th April

I don't like truck drivers. Drive like nuts, don't care about traffic regulation and yes, tires... Next time you stopped at a traffic light and you have a truck next to you, look at the tires. Scary poeple.