The hellish dream usually begins like this: You`re cruising along the interstate when you glance into your rearview mirror and see a huge tractor-trailer truck less than 50 yards away and fast approaching.
Unable to speed up or change lanes because of traffic, you watch in the mirror as the truck gets closer and closer, looming ever larger as it roars up within a few feet of your bumper.
Suddenly, the truck veers sharply into the adjacent lane, speeds up and starts to thunder past your car. But about halfway past your vehicle, the truck begins fishtailing fitfully.
A couple of heart-pounding milliseconds later, the weaving tail end of the truck hits your car with an explosive bang, sending your vehicle into an uncontrollable spin and cartwheeling, end over end, down a steep enbankment into a ditch.
Depending on how bad your nightmares get, you end up badly shaken and bruised or fatally injured.
If car drivers are having that nightmare more often these days, it`s because they are being reminded more often of how scary big trucks can be to the motoring public.
In recent months, it has been a hot topic on radio and television talk shows. It has been the subject of numerous newspaper editorials.
It`s all part of a campaign by safety and environmental organizations, special interest groups and several state and local highway agencies to drum up support for proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate. That legislation would restrict the use of so-called ”big-double” and ”triple-combination” trailer trucks to the 17 states that permit either or both.
On the other side of the big-truck issue is the American Trucking Association, several state trucking groups that represent the interests of trucking firms and a number of individual freight haulers who see larger trucks as a means of cutting costs and, thus, increasing profits.
These proponents also have used talk shows, advertisements and newspaper columns to throw cold water on the arguments of opponents of larger trucks, contending that the combination trucks are safer than conventional rigs.
They would like to see the proposed legislation on Capitol Hill scrapped, so each state could decide whether to permit big-double and triple-combination trucks on their highways.
Big-double trucks-a tractor pulling two trailers, each 40 to 53 feet long-are legal in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.
They also are legal in Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio but only on those state`s toll roads.
Triple-trailer rigs, consisting of a tractor pulling three 28 1/2-foot trailers, are legal in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.
They also are permitted in Indiana and Ohio but, again, only on toll roads.
Some of these states also permit other forms of longer combination trucks, including so-called ”Rocky Mountain doubles,” a tractor pulling a 48- to 53-foot trailer and a second, 28 1/2-foot trailer.
Most states, including Illinois, allow only standard-size trailers from 48 to 65 feet long. Some, including Illinois, also allow so-called small-double trailer rigs, a tractor pulling two 28 1/2-foot trailers.
Most of the states that prohibit the longer-combination trucks also restrict the weight of commercial trucks operating on their highways to 80,000 pounds.
Among the organizations opposed to expanding the use of longer-combination trucks are such highway safety groups as the American
Automobile Association, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Several public interest groups such as the National Taxpayers Union;
environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation; and insurance groups such as the American Insurance Asscoation also are opposed.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and several state highway and transportation departments, including the Illinois Department of
Transportation, oppose them, too.
Locally, the City of Chicago and 101 other municipalities and local government associations in the area are on record against bigger and heavier trucks.
Chief among special interest groups in opposition is the American Association of Railroads.
The Washington, D.C.-based association, the chief lobbying group for the nation`s railroads, has spent an estimated $20 million on an advertising campaign to raise the public`s consciousness about potential safety problems that might be created if larger trucks are allowed on highways across the country.
The association acknowledges that the chief reason for its opposition is economic.
If larger trucks are allowed in more states, more freight is likely to be hauled by trucks than by trains.
”If trucks are permitted to grow as long and as heavy as some in the trucking industry have proposed, railroad traffic and profits would plunge, forcing line abandonments and rail service quality reductions,” said George S. Whaley, a spokesman for the association.
But Whaley said the association also opposes bigger trucks for safety reasons.
The association has had a long-time interest in making railroad crossings safer for automobile drivers, he pointed out.
What the association and other opposition groups say they fear is that these huge rigs, which can be roughly eight passenger-car lengths or almost twice the length of the largest standard trailer, will dramatically increase the number of traffic accidents if allowed to proliferate.
In addition, they say they`re worried about the impact such diesel-guzzling rigs could have on the environment and potential damage to roadbeds.
Unlike standard 65-foot trailers, which weigh up to 80,000 pounds, big-double and triple-trailer rigs can weigh 110,000 to 135,000 pounds.
”One big-double trailer does as much damage to a road each year as 9,600 cars,” said Mel Kehr, of Darien, who has helped organize local government and civic group opposition to larger trucks in northeastern Illinois.
As for safety, Kehr noted that about 100,000 people a year are the victims of accidents involving trucks with 4,500 being killed. And of those killed, he said 86 percent are automobile drivers or passengers.
”From a road maintenance standpoint, a safety standpoint and an environmental standpoint, these larger trucks that are allowed in some states are just bad news,” Kehr said.
The railroad association agrees.
”Our position is that the nation`s highway system already is consuming itself,” Whaley said. ”If trucks become heavier and longer, the problems of highway congestion, disrepair, pollution and accidents will expand substantially.”
But, the American Trucking Association and the interests it represents argue that big trucks aren`t something to be feared.
”Ironically, the safety of longer combination vehicles is even better than that of standard trucks,” Thomas J. Donohue, president of the American Trucking Association, wrote in an op-ed piece published in USA Today this year.
The safety record of longer combination trucks is ”so much better that, despite the railroads` best efforts, independent research groups continue to recommend selective use of these more productive vehicles.”
The trucking industry also argues that longer combination trucks would reduce the industry`s costs because they wouldn`t have to use so many trucks to haul freight.
And, by reducing the cost of transporting freight, consumers of the products being transported likely would see their costs reduced as well, trucking industry officials contend.
A study prepared a few years ago for the trucking industry by The Boston Consulting Group Inc. in Chicago, determined that the cost of operating double-trailer rigs, including labor, fuel and maintenance, was 25 percent cheaper than operating a standard-size, 48-foot trailer truck.
In the last couple of years, opponents and proponents of larger trucks have been battling each other in the legislative chambers of cities and states across the country.
This year the battleground shifted to Congress, where the issue was debated in conjunction with the pending highway-surface transit
reauthorization bill.
The House and Senate each tacked on amendments to their versions of the highway bill that would continue to restrict big-double trailer and triple-trailer trucks weighing more than 80,000 pounds to states that already allow them.
But big truck opponents aren`t certain of victory.
”Both the Senate and House versions currently are in conference committee,” said rail association spokeswoman Carol Perkins. ”So until a unified congressional bill emerges and President Bush signs it with the restriction on big trucks intact, we will continue to keep the pressure on.”
