ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609090082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Roanoke's Rapids
Second of a series
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
WHETHER PARKED or barreling down the road, tractor-trailer trucks have been making their presence known to automobile drivers on Interstate 81.
People who travel Interstate 81 in and around the Roanoke Valley decry the increasing presence of heavy trucks and the traffic problems they cause, from riding in packs and tailgating on downhills to rolling at excessive speeds and blocking lanes when they climb.
Truckers who run roads nationwide have a three-word response: No big deal.
I-81 is "right moderate compared to some of them," said Dwight Aufleger of Arkansas during a refueling stop at Truckstops of America in Botetourt County. "I-40 is worse."
"Every now and then it's congested," said Will Caldwell of Midland, Texas, pausing on his run to New York, "but I've done seen worse. This is heaven compared to where I'm going."
From their vantage point high above the pavement, the problems lie with the cars and the people who drive them.
"They're ignorant," said Larry Orey, a trucker from Iowa.
"Ignorant to the fact that a truck can't stop on a dime," said Al Audrain, who lives in Florida and drives for an Alabama truck line. "They know how to drive in traffic with their own kind, but not with trucks."
When he's pulling a light load uphill, Don Hinchey of Yorktown hates to come up on a car traveling under the speed limit. That forces him to swing into the left lane and labor to get past.
Sometimes, when he activates his left blinker, car drivers will race to pass him before he changes lanes, Aufleger said.
Orey complained that when he's driving in the right lane and cars attempt to merge from the ramp, they assume that he's holding his ground just to inconvenience them and respond by gesturing obscenely and screaming insults. They can't see that a car in the left lane has him hemmed in.
Hinchey despises motorists who "ride the tandems," tucking behind his trailer door, hidden from his side mirrors.
Caldwell loathes the motorists who pull in front of his 80,000-pound rig traveling 65 mph "and get mad because you're too close on them. They stick out their fingers and call you all kinds of SOB."
"They should take a course on what it takes to drive one of these things, and what the hazards are," Hinchey said.
Studies by the Virginia Department of Transportation showed that from 1991 to 1994, the average daily traffic count on I-81 increased 15 percent, while accidents rose 37 percent.
In 1992, VDOT estimated that trucks constituted 25 percent of I-81's average daily presence. From 1991 to 1994, they were involved in 25 percent of the 5,591 reported accidents on the road - and 36 percent of the fatal accidents, according to the Center for Transportation Research at Virginia Tech.
From 1986 to 1990, I-81 led Virginia interstates with 145 truck overturns, the most severe type of accident.
In 1993, the highway ranked second in that group in the severity of accidents and first in property damage.
Three percent of northbound accidents on I-81 were fatal, the highest rate among Virginia's interstates.
Overall, the road measured 27th among the state's highways for relative traffic density. But the Bristol and Staunton districts ranked first and the Salem district second.
Six of the top 10 accident locations are between Christiansburg and Botetourt County.
Depending on the place, the day of the week and the time of day, trucks constitute 19 percent to 40 percent of the traffic volume on I-81.
If anyone needs training, say many who travel the highway, it's the truck drivers. Their sins are legion, and their numbers continue to grow. The Virginia Department of Transportation's weigh station in Troutville processes an average of 60,000 trucks per week. Between 4 p.m. and midnight, the facility routinely weighs 4,000 trucks on Sundays and on some weekdays, as well. "A lot of times I'll be coming up that grade toward the scales and there will be two trucks abreast," says John Lipscomb, a Roanoke real estate appraiser who lives in Botetourt County, "one going 47 mph trying to pass one going 45."
Bobby Myers drives 35,000 miles per year, mostly in his job as business manager of Local 980 of the Laborers Union in Roanoke. One recent afternoon he was riding in the left lane beside a tractor-trailer carrying live chickens in cages. The truck started moving into his lane. Myers honked the horn, but the driver just kept coming, forcing Myers to let him in.
A few years ago, he worked for several months in Maryland and Washington.
"I used to hate going back to [Washington] D.C. and Baltimore on Sundays," he says. "Those trucks have the highway logjammed."
"This is the problem that people talk to me about," says Fred Altizer, administrator of VDOT's Salem district. "They are actually fearful sometimes because of the speed of those trucks."
Driver exhaustion, rolling terrain, construction zones and truck-car interactions exacerbate the issue. Truckers race downhill to gather speed to go uphill, occupying more lane space than they would on flat ground. Motorists repeatedly describe instances when trucks have pressed them from behind, boxed them in or almost run them off the road.
"I get a sense that the public is at sort of a panic point about how much they can absorb with that particular paradigm," Altizer says. The interstate will be widened, but it's too soon to tell when work in the Roanoke area will start.
"I know that a speeding truck is a disturbing thing," says James Lewis, director of media relations for the American Trucking Associations in Alexandria. "I can't deny it. I see them out there myself."
But he says, "The vast majority of truck drivers and companies are operating within the law and operating safely."
Dale Bennett, executive director of the Virginia Trucking Association, flatly asserts, "Our drivers are the safest, most professional of any on the road."
He offers these statistics.
*From 1984 to 1994, miles driven by heavy trucks increased 37 percent while the truck-related fatal accident rate dropped 36 percent.
*In 1994, tractor-trailers were involved in only 2.7 percent of total traffic crashes in Virginia.
*Fatal accidents involving tractor-trailers were 45 percent fewer in 1995 than in 1986.
*Almost 94 percent of the 900 people killed on Virginia's highways died in accidents that did not involve a tractor-trailer.
Lewis, of the national trucking group, says trucks were involved in only 13 percent of the 40,000 U.S. highway fatalities in 1994, and 71 percent of the fatal accidents involving trucks and cars were attributed to the cars' drivers. It's the "bad actors" - a small minority, he says - who get the public's attention.
But Brian O'Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, tees off on many of his claims. Passenger car drivers may precipitate many fatal crashes with trucks, but the issue is more complex than that, he says. A driver who pulls in front of a truck and gets hit initiates the event, but what if the truck is speeding, or if its brakes are bad? Safety experts seldom attribute crashes to a single cause, he says.
Trucks do have a lower accident rate per mile than cars, O'Neill says. But trucks travel most of their miles on low-risk interstates while cars do most of theirs on more dangerous, urban roads. "If you compared crash rates on interstate or toll roads for cars and trucks, you'd find a per-mile crash rate higher for trucks."
The general population does not understand the intricacies of driving a tractor-trailer, he agrees. But truckers do.
"We have all experienced where you're traveling at a speed maybe slightly in excess of the speed limit and you look in your rearview mirror and all you can see is the grille of a tractor-trailer. He knows he doesn't have good brakes compared to me. Why is he doing that?
"The reality is that passenger car drivers are all or mostly amateurs. Truck drivers are professionals who are doing this for a living."
Lost in the static is the reason for the trucks in the first place.
"What I try to get people to understand is that the freight industry is a quality of life issue in America," Altizer says. "It's caused by the competition of open markets and on time delivery."
The trucks won't go away. They carry 80 percent of manufactured freight in Virginia and are the exclusive suppliers of some 80 percent of the communities in the nation. With businesses cutting inventories to save on costs and demanding just-in-time service, the number of trucks on the highways can only rise.
That, says Altizer, is a big part of the conflict between automobile drivers and the motor freight industry.
Tuesday: We have met the enemy, and he is us.
LENGTH: Long : 162 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. 1. A car (top) is dwarfed by largeby CNBtrucks at the Truckstops of America in Botetourt County. 2. Traffic
flow (above) on Interstate 81 on Wednesday, Aug. 28, was no heavier
than usual, with a fair number of trucks cruising the road. Many car
drivers fear the growing presence of tractor-trailers on the scenic
interstate. Truck drivers call I-81 "heaven" compared with other
roads they use. color. Graphic: Chart: Trucking on I-81. color. KEYWORDS: MGR