Bad Brakes On Dump Truck Led To Massive Crash: Santa Rosa Police

SANTA ROSA, CA — Santa Rosa police said Sunday that a 10-vehicle collision in February was caused by a driver who failed to maintain and adjust the brakes of a dump truck. The Feb. 5 collisions injured seven people, some of them critically, when the truck hauling debris from homes destroyed in the Tubbs Fire in the Fountaingrove neighborhood of Santa Rosa drove through a red light at the intersection of Mendocino Avenue and Fountaingrove Parkway.

California Highway Patrol and Santa Rosa police officers investigated the collisions. A physical inspection of the truck by the CHP revealed three of the truck's eight brakes were out of adjustment and not functioning properly, police said.

The truck driver, Francisco Alberto Rodriguez, 45, of Sunnyvale, told investigators the 2009 Kenworth Northwest commercial truck's brakes were functioning properly at the start of the day, police said. The brakes failed as the truck drove down a hill on Fountaingrove Parkway and into the Mendocino Avenue intersection.

The truck was consumed by fire and the majority of the braking system was completely destroyed, police said. The truck was owned by Flores Trucking, a Vallejo-based company, police said. A call to the company was not
returned this morning.

Rodriguez was in violation of the state's vehicle code, which requires brakes to be adjusted "so as to operate as equally as practicable on the wheels on opposite sides of the vehicle," police said.

The Santa Rosa Police Department's records division is processing the collision report, and it will be forwarded to the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office for review.

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• 2 Seriously Injured In 10-Vehicle, Fiery Pile-Up
• Dump Truck Running Red Light Caused Fiery 10-Vehicle Crash

By Bay City News Service

Photos courtesy Santa Rosa Fire Department