Posted on 12/15/2016 8:09:33 PM PST by Morgana
When you hear people complaining about Comcast, it’s normally something to do with bad service or price hikes. But this repair tech found a whole new way to make people mad about Comcast: park your truck right over a blind hill in the middle of a snowstorm, cause multiple cars to bail into a ditch, then drive off while blaming everyone else.
The video shows a pair of Comcast trucks carrying out repairs along a 40mph road in a rural area, in the middle of a snowstorm. Where the trucks are stopped is just over a blind hill, so the Comcast workers throw out a couple cones to close the lane.
Unfortunately, they use four cones about 150 feet behind the truck to close the lane. Cars coming over the hill don’t see the cones until far too late, and given the snowy conditions, they bail into the ditch — at best.
VIDEO ON LINK
(Excerpt) Read more at bgr.com ...
The whole “camera-in-hand” posture leads me to believe he was seeking an argument as the foremost objective.
He had asked them to be rational before that. He was getting it on video for the trails. These guys are going to be held criminally negligent under Indiana law as is comcast.
The prison guards in the death camps of Germany were just following the rules too, ignoring the human suffering. That defense did not keep them from getting their necks stretched.
After the first slide off, they became liable. I would sell my com cast stock, because if anyone was hurt in that grey car, every ambulance chaser lawyer in the country is salivating.
Pitiful customer image problem... this will go viral.
A lane closure with no human, flaggers, traffic control ? Sue their asses.
They were not exactly following indot rules. They were following comcast rules. Comcast better grab their ankles and prepare for impact.
If you took the time to read my first post i said i was relaying what i saw on the news. Quit being a dork.
Thing is..how can one see wrecks happening around you and not think “maybe we need to rethink this?”
Start with the basics.
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Fundamental Principles
The principles listed below provide a guiding philosophy of good temporary traffic control and enhance the safety of motorists, pedestrians, and workers in the vicinity of temporary traffic control zones.
1.Make traffic safety and temporary traffic control an integral and high-priority element of every project from planning through design, construction, and maintenance.
2.Inhibit traffic movement as little as possible.
3.Provide clear and positive guidance to drivers and pedestrians as they approach and travel through the temporary traffic control zone.
4.Inspect traffic control elements routinely and make modifications when necessary.
5.Pay increased attention to roadside safety in the vicinity of temporary traffic control zones.
6.Train all persons that select, place, and maintain temporary traffic control devices.
7.Establish proper legislative authority to implement and enforce needed traffic regulations, speed zoning, parking controls, and incident management.
8.Keep the public well informed.
9.If there is a side road intersection or ramps within the work area, additional traffic control, such as flaggers and appropriate signage, may be needed on the side road approaches or ramps.
10.Good judgment must always be used to determine the final traffic control setup.
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Supervisor‘s Checklist
1.Have a traffic control plan before going to the work site.
2.Ask yourself, “What is the driver‘s view of the work site”, (at night, during peak hours, etc.) Whenever possible, after setting up, drive through the zone to see it from the motorist perspective.
3.Investigate crashes/incidents to identify if changes are needed in the traffic control plan.
4.For overhead work, traffic control is required for affected lane(s).
5.If working on an interstate, check to see if an interstate Lane Closure Waiver is needed and/or approved for the location.
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Any lane closures on two lane roads, regardless of the shoulder or length of work requires a minimum of two flagmen. (pg. 58)
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ALL of the preceding takes place on a nice, bright, sunny, spring day.
Completely blocking the traffic lane of a two lane road in adverse weather? !! ??!!!
And people are blaming all the drivers spinning off into oblivion !!
Uhuh. Comcast better warm up their check signing hand.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3505223/posts?page=68#68
Quit being a drone. Apparently MAGA didn’t teach you a thing. THINK. COMMON SENSE. HAVE A CLUE. Poster in above link spells it out for you. Criminal negligence of the service techs... criminal negligence in comcast’s policy.
That manual was written for a reason. The wrecks you saw would not have happened had it been followed. 4 cones after a blind hill is idiotic. Think of a head on. Your family in a car puttering along at 5 mph one way and someone that had to get up to 30 to make it up that hill. You might just win the Darwin award that way.
(The Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognize individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool via death or sterilization by their own actions.)
Take your rage and foul-mouth rant somewhere else.
Thank you.
Like it or not, Indiana Law is very clear about this.
It is the DRIVER’s responsibility to look out for Utility trucks and other like vehicles, giving them a wide berth, no matter the conditions.
“On a two lane road, if you were to block one lane you MUST have flaggers.”
Doesn’t apply to municipal utilities, like cable, electric, trash trucks, etc.
IntroductionThe purpose of this handbook is to present guidelines for work zone traffic control and to supplement basic work zone safety training. This handbook covers the basic requirements of Part VI of the 2008 Indiana Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (IMU TCD) with particular emphasis on short term work sites. For long term work sites the IMUTCD and INDOT Standard Drawings should be consulted. These requirements apply to construction, maintenance, traffic, and utility work zones.
Oops. Thanks. Just like every one else I forgot to read the very first paragraph completely.
OK, but I don’t see how it changes any of the good points you made with the rules you posted. It seems to me they ignored ‘Fundamental Principles’ #s 3,4,5,8 and 10 and ‘Supervisor‘s Checklist’ #s 2,3 and 4.
>>A layer of sleet covered with thin snow. Slipperiest I have ever encountered in 40 years of driving.<<
Your description alone convinces me that any vehicles involved in an accident had to be driving too fast for the super slippery conditions. Comcast parked where they could access the cable to work on it. The road doesn’t have a solid shoulder where the repairman could swing the boom out over the side of the truck without the shoulder collapsing. That is why he parked on the asphalt.
http://wishtv.com/2016/12/17/isp-responds-to-more-than-500-overnight-crashes/
Really hope Comcast had a talk with their techs. Had the worst driving weather here ever.
SoCal doesn’t know how it is here. It is brutal this year. Worst I have seen in 40 years. I could walk to work or the grocery store faster than I have been able to drive. Only reason I drive is the heater in the car. -8 last night.
Comcast in a different article was cleared of all wrong doing, which was the right move. There is still an investigation going on by OSHA.
Here are the facts since some here want to jump to conclusions……
1> Did anyone ever realize the reason why Comcast was dispatched in the first place was due to an outage caused by that first motorist that went off the road in front of both of those Comcast bucket trucks. If you carefully examine that video, you clearly see the conduit feeding 120/240 to their meter on their power supply was taken out by that first vehicle, plus severing their feeder line that fed voltage to their fiber optic node that not only feeds TV, but 911 service to that general area. Blame the first motorist. NOT THEM! Or they never would have been called out there.
2> Type in 8300 blk of West Morris ST, Indianapolis on Google Maps. Take a virtual drive through here and see how this “so called hill” was such an issue for seeing this Comcast crew. Keep in mind that this could have been their local power company, mail man, trash truck, school bus stop etc. Adjusting the height for the camera on top of the Google car, even a driver in a passenger care should have easily seen the stobe lights on those 10.5’ high bucket trucks. So kick that excuse out of your argument. All drivers no matter what state you live in are to look way in advance with their own eyes as a responsible defensive driver. This video proved that many were not defensive drivers or they would have already been driving to the. Not only that as proven on the video many were able to go around the bucket trucks just fine including a school bus which leads to the next thing. Many commercial businesses are given heavy training on driving almost yearly. Those of you complaining of only Comcast here or arguing that you saw no speed issue here need to have your own licenses revoked for not having any common sense of what was proven here on this video. People who drive like those who wrecked or close to wrecking need serious retraining behind the wheel.
3> Looking at this video over and over again told me one thing……… since I am a utility worker myself. You can quote OSHA this or DOT that, but not all states have the same laws. This whether you agree or not was an emergency. Period. Comcast as many other cable companies, phone companies offer a service that is to be restored ASAP, or is reportable to the FCC for a large fine. No they cannot wait until the next morning, nor they cannot park in someone’s driveway and go cross the street to their work area, nor they are going to wait to see how long the police are going to show up. By the way the video recorder admitted he had already called the police. That was officially made their work area after that driver caused Comcast that outage. Putting more cones out would not had made any difference in this one case due to the same inattentive drivers would have just gone off the road further back…….wouldn’t they? Can’t fix stupid or the few of them that is. I myself have had many people over 21 years of this clobber my cones anyways, more in the last couple years thanks to our beloved cell phone attachment we have nowadays. Having a flagger would not have guaranteed a different outcome either. People drive the same route every day or are not paying full attention to their driving and this is what happens.
4> If anything Comcast need’s to send that first person’s insurance company a bill for damages that cause them their outage and the costs to permanently fix their equipment. The one tech should not gotten a bit out of line, but also Comcast should not have gone into defensive mode so fast being appalled about their techs trying to restore service as soon as possible. How many companies do you see doing that for their customers, not to mention on a day like that. Lastly if you think you could have done a better job than those did that day I suggest you get into research mode and read up on this industry and exactly what these guys go through every day to provide the service that many here take for granted. Better yet they should have to take a one month crash course on a ride along with these techs to see what the real world is like. Because the majority of the media, including this site is not going to tell you the truth.
Okay I’ll give you that so am gonna ask two questions...
1. Why are their boxes so close to the road that if an accident happens they would be hit and Comcast would go down?
2. Why are not like Suddenlink who has theirs up on poles? So they are not hit as easily?
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