"Just heard a huge bang, all the cement poles in the truck bed rushed forward, towards the cab!" Mr. Ge is still shaken to this day. He said, "Sparks were flying, it was like cutting something." In an instant, the entire front of the car was flattened, and the cement poles continued to surge forward, colliding with the rear of the vehicle ahead.
He provided a formula: F (impact force) = M (mass) V (velocity) / T (time from impact to stop). "This kind of impact force calculation applies to emergency braking; if the braking is slow, the force will naturally be much smaller."
What does this number explain? Cement pole collision diagram drawn by Liang Jinming.
Currently, the traffic police department is investigating and handling this matter.
At that moment, the traffic light at the intersection was changing. Mr. Ge saw the first car had already crossed the road, and the second car stopped when the red light came on. "The third car following closely behind stopped about 10 meters away." What he didn't expect was that, while the car in front hadn't moved yet, the third car suddenly accelerated again. Just as it started, there was another abrupt brake.
Let's now substitute into the formula:
According to him, each vehicle carried approximately 19 cement poles, each with a diameter of about 50 centimeters and a length of around 10 meters. "For safety, the cement poles are also secured with steel wire ropes." He said that such an incident was also his first encounter.
The traffic police department reminded that for trucks carrying long goods, the cargo must be securely fixed. For heavy-loaded trucks, in case of an emergency, sudden braking should not be done, nor should the steering wheel be sharply turned, otherwise the cargo can easily rush towards the cab under inertia. The driver can use intermittent braking to create a buffer process.
The resulting calculation yields F approximately equal to 63,330 Newtons.
"This is equivalent to the impact force generated by 6,333 kilograms," Mr. Wu explained, "which is roughly the weight of 84 average adults (75 kg each) pressing down on you, or akin to a 6-ton heavy-duty truck pressing on you. Such force is unimaginable."
The accident vehicle was loaded with 19 cement poles, suspected of overloading.
"Such an accident, I've never seen before," talking about the crash that occurred early yesterday morning, Mr. Ge felt both regretful and fearful, finding it hard to believe — a fully loaded semi-truck, after an emergency brake, had its cement poles inside the trailer pushed forward due to inertia, flattening the cab and causing the driver to die on the spot.
"Too terrible," Mr. Ge observed blood everywhere inside the vehicle; the driver and the seat were folded together, completely crushed. "I only saw one hand and one foot exposed," Mr. Ge sighed, speculating whether the driver might have been too tired or experienced some hallucination. "The vehicle was loaded with too many cement poles; the heavier the load, the greater the inertia and the impact force."
Yesterday morning, Mr. Ge was waiting for friends near the intersection of Wanda Road and Asia-Pacific Road in Xiaoshan. Around 12:20 AM, he saw several fully loaded semi-trucks carrying cement poles coming down Wanda Road in grand procession.
"Such an impact force, how big could it be?"
"Was the driver driving late at night possibly fatigued?" the journalist asked.
"Our company emphasizes safety education repeatedly, strictly prohibiting fatigued driving and drunk driving," he said. These vehicles were transporting goods at night, running one trip per day which took about four to five hours, allowing sufficient rest during the day. Thus, from the business transportation volume perspective, there was definitely no issue of fatigued driving. "However, whether he rested well during the day is difficult for us to monitor. Perhaps at the time of the accident, his attention wasn't focused, or he dozed off due to fatigue."
The impact force caused by emergency braking is indeed massive.
In the afternoon, the journalist reached a fellow driver from the same fleet via phone.
Subsequently, the journalist learned that the involved fleet belonged to a container transport company. According to a responsible person surnamed Wu, the deceased driver was surnamed Liu, originally from Anhui province, in his 30s, and his family was rushing to Hangzhou.
"I glanced once, then walked away. It's hard to accept such an event happening; I haven't even eaten lunch until now," he said. They were all employees of the same transport company. That day, there were a total of five or six vehicles delivering goods, preparing to send them to a construction site in Xiaoshan.
We calculated the mass based on each cement pole weighing 2000 kilograms, so for 19 poles, M=38,000 kilograms.
According to eyewitnesses, the vehicle quickly started and stopped shortly thereafter. Although the speed wouldn't have been particularly high, it certainly would have been at least 5 meters per second. Therefore, V=5 meters/second.
"Is it true that the vehicle was carrying 19 cement poles, thus overloaded?" the journalist pursued.
"Definitely overloaded somewhat, actually within the transport industry, it's often like this," however, he stated that exactly how much it exceeded would depend on the specific specifications of the cement poles to determine.