Someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do…

I’m not a professional truck driver. Never driven a dump truck. I assume there are some intricacies to the task that ‘m unaware of. Still… you’d imagine that “don’t drive with the damn thing raised” would be like number two or three on the checklist. But that wasn’t the case in Houston recently (note: colorful metaphors are deployed):

This sort of thing apparently happens more than you might wish… here it is in Saudi Arabia:

And here’s a collection of ’em (note: a pedestrian bridge is hit in one of the vids, and you can bet there were injuries and/or death):

What *must* have happened is that the bed of the dump truck for some reason deploys while going down the road. But whether that’s due to a mechanical failure or the driver hitting the wrong button… dunno. This might be the sort of thing that could be fixed with proper design… the truck having a built-in governor that won’t let it move faster than, say, 10 miles per hour if the bed is raised, or will automatically lower it if the truck’s going faster than 10 mph… something like that. Or a least a friggen’ LOUD beeping when the bed is raised and a flashing red light. *Something.*