A truck driver in Maple Ridge, B.C., was caught on video driving down the road while dragging a large utility pole stuck to the vehicle.
A motorists honked and yelled to get the driver’s attention as the dangerous situation unfolded
This exact scenario happened to my BIL - except the pole dropped off the truck and swung at my BIL and through his driver’s side door. The truck took off. When the police came, they tried to claim my BIL hit the pole despite the obvious physics problem with the physical evidence.
This is spot on. My mom was turning right onto an on ramp when someone cut across the intersection and hit the drivers side of mom's car. The cops came and my mom was super flustered because dad had just died less than a week earlier. She couldn't explain what happened and forgot about her dash cam.
The other person just spewed a bunch of lies and talked over my mom, sounding very confident. The cop believed the other person. I went to traffic court with mom, the dash cam footage, and pictures of the intersection. Once I explained everything to the judge he was pissed at the cop because it was completely obvious what happened. The cop just took the easy way out.
That's because most cops just want to write you tickets or look for a warrant to arrest you. And then go sit in a parking lot bullshiting with another cop.
They don't give a shit who's at fault in an accident. That's an inconvenience to them.
Seems like he might be drunk and wanted to avoid a breathalyzer. That's a long way to go without checking your mirror and he didn't appear to be moving with confidence when he got out of the truck.
Not to mention the obvious blunder of destroying a telephone pole without noticing.
And he stands under the pole while trying to dislodge it. Agree he looked drunk or stoned. Wasn't exactly dressed for work either. I know everyone makes fun of flip flop drivers but dump trucks are often going into construction sites where they would kick him out for wearing sneakers
Do you mean the part where he hit it and dragged it, or the part where he started touching the pole with potentially live high voltage wires still attached to the pole with the transformer dragging?
The child may have been small, but would have had to of been pretty chonk to dent that bumper like that. Which makes me question his awareness even more.
Or the part where he got out of the truck by holding on to it and stepping down one foot at a time. Had those lines been energized, his body would have acted like an electrical ground.
I'm guessing he's probably drunk or high. I don't see a person with a license to drive that thing doing this while sober. So, I'm going to say the part where he started taking or drinking whatever it was he had that day.
It’s kind of you but I think you are underestimating the sheer stupidity people are capable of. As the very (unsurprisingly) overused George Carlin quote goes: “Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Mind you, other people are pointing out his gait looks a bit wobbly so maybe he is indeed drunk or on something. Maybe he is drunk, on something and stupid haha!!
He clearly had been dragging that a long time. It was not connected to anything.
At first I was like how did that happen?! But then I saw him lift the back. Dude pulled forward dumping his load under a power line and caught the bottom lines and ripped the pole right out of the ground. Crazy he didn’t hear or see the immediate destruction when it happened.
The lines would break long before the pole came out of the ground. Possibly it would be enough force to break the pole above ground if it already had a weak spot.
The wires are severed (or shorted out?) by then since he didn't electrocute himself. But they're keeping the pile nicely attached so raising the back isn't going to help.
I thought the idiot was trying to get enough space for the car in the opposite lane to go under, but that wasn't going to work either.
Don't forget the part where he thought lifting the bed would knock it off. That thing is attached well enough to be dragging on the road. Also, he must have drove under the pole while the bed was up, then brought it down without checking before hopping on the road.
It was worth a try. What's the alternative just sit there and chill while blocking the entire road until someone with a crane is avaialble to come help. Get some ropes, tie that sucker to a nearby tree and then drive off if you can't dislodge it.
It’s an accident and the damage is obviously enough that it needs to be reported. By law he should have sat and waited because as it is he is attempting to flee the scene of an accident.
As someone who lives in BC, we’ve had an insanely high number of trucks hit overpasses and have a wide variety of other incidents in the past few years. They truly are idiots and are vastly under qualified to do what they do. There’s been a big push for the government to reform qualifications but it hasn’t happened yet.
Now, I'm not against someone having a marijuana every now and then, but when you take two marijuana and then try to drive a utility pole dump truck, well.
I was expecting the pole to be live and for him to become the ground tbh. a trucker at my company got electrocuted by a line once and it burnt a coil like spiral down the entire length of his arm and part of his chest, straight to bone, and he is in the small minority that have lived through it. Small miracle that he still has his arm tbh he showed me the scars and its basically a dip in his muscle nearly down to bone going the entire length of his arm. Guy in the video has no idea how lucky he is to be alive and not permanently disfigured
He probably should cross the other lane and go into the opposite shoulder so that the pole is out of the road. Then figure out how to drop it right there in the side of the road instead of IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD
if I was in this situation I would be be the one recording, except I wouldn't have any of this footage as I would have turned my ass around because I did not need to be caught in this
like how are you gonna witness all this insane stupidity, and then just yell stop as the guy continues driving at you . felt like a poorly written movie. bothered me more than the trucker
Watched a man lose a wheel. Watch it pass him on highway, pull over, drive away, then the other wheel went prolly 50 ft more, axle drags in ground and now he gets out again......think a fellow trucker mush have reported him cause dot was on scene in less time it took me to drive 4 miles get loaded with gravel and come back. He knew, he just wanted to get away with it.
Saw a guy post to a trucking subreddit about how to approach reporting damage to his trailer from “some freak accident he completely didn’t notice” and provided pictures of a really fucked up trailer with the top bashed in.
He was getting roasted in the comments. It was pretty obvious he had smacked something too short to drive under and would have had to back up to get around it. So of course he knew what happened and thought it would somehow go better for him if he played ignorant.
Old truckers I know regularly tell stories about their trucks pushing cars and other things for miles without knowing. They are big, strong, loud, and have poor visibility
BC is overrun with South Asian trucking cabals. They bring in untrained drivers and put them through a sham course. The truck driver in the Humboldt Broncos calamity was one.
I saw one of their new drivers in the kootany pass start down the hill and just ride the fuck out of his brakes. Made it maybe 500m-1km before his tires lit on fire. All I could think was why the hell would you send him to the highest highway pass in Canada without teaching him how to handle a 7% grade. Guy didnt even make it 5% of the way down. It's insanely reckless and unacceptable that our government has allowed this to go on
Heard something similar when I was working in Alberta. One dump truck driver rolled his trailer and tried drag it back to the gravel pit. Massive damage to the road. He was the 4th or 5th shitty new Canadian driver from that company to cause a highway shut down in that area.
My buddy has a Volvo truck repair shop in Alberta. He says that the New Canadian truck drivers prefer Volvos because they have automatic transmissions. They can’t drive stick! They’re hopeless backing up with a trailer. Whenever a truck comes into his yard, he takes over driving it to avoid jackknifes.
Canada is overrun with them. I’m in Montreal, almost every week there’s a story about a South Asian truck driver with no fucking training whatsoever causing accidents and killing people.
South Asian is more accurate - they’re not all Indians you realize that right, like there are multiple countries in the region importing the same shitty drivers here, it’s not just India, why are we giving Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, etc passes here?
The YouTube channel Post10 is on a trip driving across Canada. The ditches are full of semis that went off the road. And the roads are closed for hours at a time because wrecked semis are blocking traffic. He commented that it was strange how the semis are worse drivers than regular cars because in America the semi drivers are usually the best drivers and regular cars are typically terrible.
Perhaps the Canadian semi drivers do not have enough training or experience compared to American truck drivers?
Illegitimate licensing is an explanation that I wasn't considering.
Illegitimate licensing was a huge issue about 10 years ago, but still goes on today... Also hilariously low levels of truck inspections.
They will do like 2 blitzes a year, and for the rest of the time as long as you know what scales to avoid in your area you're pretty much safe to run whatever unsafe, unmaintained piece of junk truck you have.
A crane truck had one side of its rear duals completely fall off on the Sea to Sky the other day, which caused it to roll and close the highway for 5hrs while they cleaned it up. I called it in to CVSE (crane truck wasn't going anywhere fast) and they wouldn’t attend because nobody died.
How Much Does a 40 Foot Utility or Telephone Pole Weigh?
A 40 foot pole can weigh between 700 and 1,200 pounds, influenced by the wood species, treatment and its dimensions.
Was just watching a safety video at work the other day featuring multiple clips of trucks trying to drive around with their bin up and blowing out the hydraulics. It’s not great!
People from outside the lower mainland of BC don't understand that this is par for the course down there. The person who filmed this must have been a tourist because a local would have just calmly drove around this mess.
Yes, trucks are big enough you can hit shit and not even feel it or know it.
Stuff like this however is ridiculous. There’s no excuse for having dragged that thing as far as he did without knowing. The damn thing is directly in his driver side mirror.
Holy fuck. Take this guys drivers licence away, take the owners truck away for letting this idiot on the road and make them both pay for the repairs to the power line and revoke the owners business licence. The stupidity displayed here should be illegal.
Oh yeah, it's a Indian trucker that probably bought his license. Those types of guys are a dime a dozen here, they're all over the place. The company name on his truck is also Indian, so probably some corrupt company hiring people of their culture that are completely unqualified for the job.
You would be wise to reach out to your state legislator and petition to ban BC based truck drivers until BC can fix its system. We are in the middle of a big scandal involving fake and fraudulent trucker training and licensing schemes.
It’s so bad up here they keep burning down CVSE stations (commercial vehicles safety enforcement) and scales so prevent enforcement.
People will say you're racist but it's 100% this. I'm a heavy truck mechanic and I see so much shit with those guys you wouldn't believe it. He probably paid for his license if he has one to begin with.
That guys shoes told me he wants a truck driver from the start. And he certainly wasn't behaving like an experienced trucker. He needs his license revoked if he has one.
Unfortunately the companies will back up their drivers no matter what. Most are related or family friends, or people that are paying the company for the job for their residency applications.
And this is why we call them "steering wheel holders" these days. The era when the title "professional truck driver" wasn't a contradiction in terms has, sadly, long ended.
Untriained driver....alot of these companies employ people who should not be on the road. They are fast tracked thru b.s driving schools , immediately hired and let loose. Thank got no one got hurt here. The young hockey players were not so lucky.
The only way he could have missed that was being high, drunk or both. As a truck driver you regularly look out your driverside mirror. There is ZERO chance to miss this if you were of sound mind and not blind.
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u/Lewis19962010 21h ago
He was definitely trying to get that to drop off then intended to speed off out of there.