I started the ADR course today along with 20 fellow students.
Most of them are renewing a certificate they already have so its full of people with lots of experience.
I have been very quiet just sitting there and trying to take it all in.
We started with introductions and a talk through the basics of what is expected of us.
It all seemed a bit technical at first and I was pretty worried about the exams on Thursday but in the afternoon it all seemed to click and I feel a lot more confident about it all now.
We studied the first part of ADR The movement of Hazardous Materials, Core and were shown loads of slides and videos of frightening scenarios and injury's.
A famous incident I heard about today was finally put to rest, a myth I have been hearing about ever since I started lorry driving.
It was 1969 and a tanker carrying an acid called Oleum was involved in an accident with a scaffold lorry.
The scaffold poles pierced the tanker and a large amount of the Oleum leaked onto the M6.
An off duty nurse was following the tanker and rushed over to help,
The driver was banging on the windows of the cab to warn her not to approach but she thought he needed help and carried on toward him.
The rumour was that she was completely melted in the pool of acid.
I saw the photos today and she wasn't all melted but it was pretty bad.
A policeman attending the scene was also badly injured. He suffered damaged lungs when he breathed in the fumes and badly burned feet when he stood in the pool of Oleum. He was off work for nine months.
I was taught that it was this incident that paved the way for a set of regulations covering the movement of hazardous materials now known as "The Carriage Regs"
I'm going back to the revision books so Ill post another update tomorrow.
Thanks for the kind comments , glad you are reading Victory . Lorryday
ReplyDeletetotally true storie my dad saw it.i have seen the photos not nice
ReplyDeleteA lot of rubbish on here about this accident, the accident was in November 1972 on the M6 just North of what is now the M58 junction, in 1972 it was the Orrell junction. The tanker was on route from St Helens to Whitehaven loaded with 30% Oluem (Fuming Sulphuric Acid) the tanker driver swerved to avoid a vehicle and struck the corner of a skeleton trailer puncturing the tank, the driver was praised in his attempts to warn people to stay away and did not remain in his cab but he also received burns to his feet as he did not even stop to put us safety footwear on in his haste to warn people away, sadly not able to stop the victim. There is a commonly used photograph shown about of a tanker lying on it's side across the central reservation the is nothing to do with the accident where the nurse died this was on the M5 and anyone who knows can see that it was on a two lane motorway (M5) not a three lane as the M6 was.
ReplyDeleteI was employed by the Chemical Company who owned the Oleum tanker as a driver from 1970 until 2002 when the factory at St Helens closed.
Just a comment to support the post above, the tanker shown on the link here was on the M5 when the trailer became detached from the tractor unit.
ReplyDeletehttp://the-ncec.com/assets/NewsAndArticles/AEA-Ox-Uni-Careers-Talk-01-11-10.pdf
In the photo of the tanker incident it can be seen to be displaying hazchem panels, this proves its not the original oleum incident because the panels came as a result of the incident
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