{"id":244710,"date":"2016-05-20T01:13:53","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T01:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-is-congress-using-zika-to-weaken-truck-safety\/"},"modified":"2016-05-20T14:07:21","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T14:07:21","slug":"why-is-congress-using-zika-to-weaken-truck-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-is-congress-using-zika-to-weaken-truck-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is Congress Using Zika to Weaken Truck Safety?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Aedes aegypti species of mosquito, which is responsible for spreading the Zika virus. (Photo: IAEA Imagebank<\/a>)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In a week, families all over the country will pack up their cars and make a trip to the beach, to a family picnic or just to get away from day-to-day life for the holiday weekend.<\/p>\n

And if the trucking industry had its way, those families would be sharing the interstate with semi-truck drivers who are exhausted from working more than 80 hours a week.<\/p>\n

Seriously.<\/p>\n

If that sounds reckless and unbelievably unsafe for both the public and the drivers, that’s because it is.<\/p>\n

Nearly 4,000 people die in large truck crashes each year, and driver fatigue is a leading factor according to the Department of Transportation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Take truck driver Dana Logan, who recently told reporters the heartwrenching story about how she personally witnessed another truck driver fall asleep and ram an SUV from behind.<\/p>\n

The SUV was slammed underneath Logan’s trailer, shearing off the top of the SUV and decapitating the two fathers and two children inside.<\/p>\n

The truck driver who had fallen asleep and rammed the SUV managed to ask one last question before he died, simply “Did I hit something?”<\/p>\n

More famously back in June of 2014, a Walmart truck driver had been awake for more than 28 hours when he slammed his truck into actor Tracy Morgan’s<\/a> limo van, killing one passenger and leaving Morgan in a coma for two weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aedes aegypti species of mosquito, which is responsible for spreading the Zika virus. (Photo: IAEA Imagebank) In a week, families all over the country will pack up their cars and make a trip to the beach, to a family picnic or just to get away from day-to-day life for the holiday weekend. And if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-244710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-newswire","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}