Train-crash trucker had string of traffic tickets

[n2doc]

Henry K. Lee,Will Kane, Chronicle Staff Writers

Monday, June 27, 2011

(06-27) 15:08 PDT WINNEMUCCA, NEV. -- The big-rig driver who slammed into a Bay Area-bound Amtrak train in Nevada, killing himself and at least five people aboard the train, was identified today as 43-year-old man who had been licensed to drive trucks in Nevada for only a month and had accumulated numerous traffic citations in California.

Lawrence Valli of Winnemucca, Nev., was killed when he slammed his 2008 Peterbilt truck into the side of the California Zephyr at a remote rail crossing on U.S. Highway 95, about 70 miles east of Reno, shortly before 11:30 a.m. Friday. Valli, pulling a pair of empty gravel trailers, applied his brakes moments before the crash but was unable to stop in time, investigators said.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board said the gates and warning lights were working at the crossing, and that Valli should have been able to spot them from a mile away.

Records show that Valli received his license to drive big rigs in Nevada in May 2011, and that in 2008 and 2009 he was driving a school bus in California - where he received four traffic citations in a three-month period.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/27/BA461K37NM.DTL

[Kennah]

1. Years ago, I worked on contract at the Department of Licensing in Olympia, WA

Database was rather aged, and the application evolved (sorta) from an Assembly language app on an RCA box to a COBOL language app on a Univac (later Sperry, today Unisys 2200) box.

Anywho, there was a hard coded table (COBOL loves that stuff) for 50 traffic violations. I mean, really, who would ever in their lifetime rack up more than 50 traffic violations? Right?

Well, it didn't take long, so DOL had to devise a way to point a person's traffic record to their next record with their next 50 violations. The folks there were smart enough, or had sufficient insight, to make the solution work so that ANY NUMBER of traffic records could be linked together so that a person could rack up any number of violations and DOL could store the details in blocks of 50.

CDL was a good step, but it has NOT solved the problem.