This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Imagine you are driving to your house to get lunch before you go to your meeting. It's a nice day and you are super excited to eat at that new burger joint that just opened up on the other side of town. You get there and eat. You take your time, lunch lasts for another half hour, and then you head back to work on the freeway. Barely any traffic, but then you pass 9000 South and all of the sudden it is bumper-to-bumper. You look up ahead and you see that a semi-truck tanker is tipped on its side. Now there is nothing you can do about your situation. You miss work and you are stuck in your car for the next few hours.
New regulations should be put on truck drivers. The reason for this is because when they are involved in an accident they disrupt the whole system. The accident on Oct. 5 shows this ("Semi-tanker rig hauling 'hazardous' material topples on I-15, closes freeway in both directions").
One regulation I suggest they follow is a slower speed and a larger following distance. By enacting this it will ensure that the accidents do to other drivers stupidity will be eliminated. As in the article, the accident was caused by a trailer that wasn't attached correctly. Had the truck driver been further back and been driving slower he would have had more reaction time to stop and this whole crisis could have been averted.
Jacob Hawkins
South Jordan