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Comment by denimnerd42 | Hacker News Reader

accident involving one in the news recently. impatient/distracted driver crashed into the transport truck.

https://www.tdtnews.com/news/business/article_c49e80c8-124b-....

Link for Europe: https://archive.ph/IHdjm

So, the chains broke when doing an emergency braking and the load crushed the pick-up? I clearly see that the driver was at fault, but aren't loads also not supposed to easily escape their tie-downs?

Some loads like this one are so heavy that you just can't defeat their inertia, hence why you go slowly and have a large escort. It couldn't be stopped that quickly just due to the nature of the load.

At some point if you're getting behind the wheel of a vehicle on the road, you have some responsibility yourself. If you're not looking where you're going at all and drive into the path of a heavily-escorted million-plus-pound load and it ends up crushing you because of the sheer physics of the situation, that's on you. There's a hundred other more likely ways to kill yourself on the road if you're not looking where you're going, that don't involve such unusual cargo.

And also, from looking at the photos of the scene, it looks like the driver may have turned quickly to attempt to avoid the crash, and the load continued on of its own inertia and overturned the entire rig, which is an issue caused by top-heavy torque that doesn't care how tightly the load is tied down at all.

Mad respect to our truckers. I could never work a job that left so much of my safety in the hands of the average driver.

Careful with that website. I am trying to access it from EU.

"We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webadmin@tdtnews.com or call 254-778-4444."

That's not a sign of anything malicious.

GDPR is just a pain in the ass to implement properly, for some US websites it's just much easier to ban people from the EU from accessing it then risk the potentially massive fines

It's not a pain in the ass at all. Just, don't track/store data on people.

You also have to have a European GDPR representative, plus legal review to make sure you’re in compliance. It’s not hard, and not necessarily a large cost, but I can see it being judged “not worth it” for a small concern.

Exactly this. I've seen many EU folk assume if a site doesn't bother with GDPR it must be malicious. When really it's just easier to avoid the EU since they decided they think their laws can apply worldwide.

I'm from Europe and never think of GDPR helping anything much, just annoyance. I can understand why other countries won't bother.

What happens btw if an American company just ignores GDPR but still welcomes European visitors? Why would they care about EU law?

> What happens btw if an American company just ignores GDPR but still welcomes European visitors? Why would they care about EU law?

EU claims EU law applies to US sites if a EU citizen visits it. This has yet to be tested in court though. I'm incredibly skeptical that it can be enforced.

Works the other way about piracy or drugs or anything.

It seems weird that someone doing something in another non-EU country would involve the EU at all!

If the American company doesn't sell things to European customers I don't think GDPR even applies.

oh interesting. well if someone wants to learn more via a search engine could use terms distillation column crash and:

> The incident occurred at about 11:20 a.m. April 27 on State Highway 36 near State Highway 317 in West Temple.

There's not really too much need for caution; they are just saying the GDPR doesn't apply to them and they would rather not deal with any issues. I do the same thing with many sites I manage, it's significantly less potential hassle.

This happens semi-regularly with links posted on HN. I always read it only as US websites who don't give a crap about the only domain where the EU is leading: countless regulation.

They just don't want to bother with the PITA that the GDPR is and just give that failing continent that my EU is the middle finger.

I think it's totally justified.

Oh yeah I remember that! My wife had to turn around and iirc that road was closed at least 2 days.

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