Saw this over on another board. Tell me what you learn from it?

http://www.king5.com/news/local/Sear...108479184.html

 

never go wheelin alone

 

thats too bad that it happened... sorry to see a simple mistake end in a tragedy. but always wheel in a pack and go prepared as i always do.

 

it very easily couldve been both of them that died. very sad, gotta respect the forces of nature

 

I heard on another forum that he was driving a diesel F250 and rolled his truch halfway down the 311B. He was heading downhill from the top. It gets pretty tight pretty quick heading down the 311 and it was late at night and pouring rain. I can't see how anyone would start down that trail in a big truck like that in those conditions and not realize that he should probably turn around.

Although hopefully this will not happen again as the Forest Service officially decided to change the Evans Creek width restriction to 80" and are going to be putting in poles that are 80" apart at the entrance to every trail.

 

whoa atleast i will fit lol

but all jokes aside this is the exact reason why restrictions are being put in our ORV areas. the sherrifs and forest rangers are tired of having to rescue "stupid" people who dont know what they are getting themselves into. it is unsafe for some and should be left to people who know what they are doing

 

I'm sorry someone died, but the idea of restricting the width of a vehicle because someone was ignorant enough to try a trail at night in something that shouldn't have been on a serious trail in the first place, is just to stupid to believe. My 89 Blazer is 84 inches wide running 40x13.50r17s with only 4.5-5 inches of lift so for some idiot to think that my Dana 60 Detroit locked front and 14bff Detroit locked rear is less stable than a vehicle that is narrower but taller is just plain dumb!

 

Def sad story but like its been sad it was the operators own fault. You shouldnt be offroading alone at all, let alone on trails your not familar with and it a truck not suited for it. Oh yeah and at night! It sad that they are putting in restrictions because one guy is an idiot!

 

Just to clarify my previous statement the width restriction has nothing to do with how safe a certain width vehicle is on the trails and everything to do with the damage to the trails caused by wider vehicles. I was simply suggesting that in this specific case if there had been a width restriction it would have prevented him from going down the trail and possibly saved his life. Of course he could have just as easily been driving a stock wrongler and rolled and died, but would have been within the width restriction. The real problem here is that he was not with any other vehicles. Wider vehicles are typically less likely to roll, but in this case the vehicle was both wide and long and I can see how a vehicle so oversized for the trials would tip over more easily at Evans.

 

We are talking about an OHV park, closing trails to any vehicle is wrong if it can get past a gate keeper type obstacle. I have ran thousands of trails and only found one trail that I was actually to wide to get through. ( and I wasn't tearing ***** up going through them either ) Only problem with shutting down trails to rigs over a certain width is maybe in a couple of years they will decide to limit widths to 50 inches. Sorry, about the rant, but I've just seen to many trails closed for made up reasons.

 

This is a tragedy.

But its the same reason we have stickers on hair dryers that say not to use them near water, and the ones that remind you not to smoke near gas pumps, and the ones that say dont stand on or above the top rung of a ladder... i could go on and on.

 

I am certain that you and the Forest Service have completely different definitions of tearing **** up. Your fears for Evans Creek are unfounded. In fact what has been going on there lately is exactly the opposite. Originally the trails at Evans Creek were built just 60" wide (or so I have been told). Then sometime around 30 years ago they set a width restriction rule of 72". This rule was never really enforced but there were recent talks that the Forest Service was going to start enforcing width restrictions to minimize trail damage. It is tough to build a rig these days under 72" so myself and many other wheelers in the area have been going to the Forest Service meetings fighting to get that restriction increased. Our arguments were heard and as of the meeting last Wednesday the Forest Service stated that they will be increasing the restriction to 80". This rule will be enforced with gatekeepers.

 

Sorry, but you shouldn't be certain that my definition of tearing **** up is different than the Forest Service definition! I helped build trails as a volunteer on National Forest lands, one of which was the Blacktail Wild Bill trail in Montana that was chosen as one of BFG's outstanding trails so I do know something about working with the Forest Service. I have been wheeling for over 35 years and have never tore **** up. As for my fears about Evans Creek they most certainly are founded, anytime a trail is restricted to an arbitrary width based on statements like the trails have gotten wider so it must be the wider rigs when it could just as easily be narrow rigs that couldn't make it unless they drove around the main part of the obstacle.
Again, sorry for the rant, but crap is still crap.

 

tragedy, he shouldn't have been alone.
Now, restricting everyone to a certain width is as retarded as anything, now you restrict people that have trucks or jeeps with wide tires that would have no trouble making it through, the only thing thats going to do is people with wider vehicles are going to start complaining and the trails are going to get shut down for everyone, seen it done, the trails we use to have in illinois got shut down because of the mistakes that a few people made, so they set restrictions, people complained about the restrictions because it was descriminatory to them and the trails got gated completely off, now there is NO trails, thanks to stupidity.

 

Ok, let me explain myself better. According to the Forest Service meeting I wend to fore Evans Creek any vehicle whose tread width exceeds the trail surface causes damage to the trail. For example here is representation of the way they want a vehicle's tires to fit on the trail.

\|_|____|_|/

Take the same trail surface with a wider vehicle and it fits like this.

|_|------|_|
\_________/

The Forest Service claims that having a wide vehicle that causes you to have to drive up on the banked surfaces on the trail causes damage (tears **** up). I do not necessarily agree with this point of view I just went to the meetings and this is what they told us. Appartently they went around at Evans and measured several trails and determined that 80" is the widest you can be without having to drive up on the banks of the trail and thereby cause damge (tear **** up). There was a previous width restricion at Evans of 72" that was a law in the books but was never enforced. They talked about actually enforcing that restriction and we convinced them to increase it to the new 80" number. My point is I am not concerned about the width restriction getting decreased in the future as RockToy suggested because we just successfully got it increased. If there were any change future change to the width restriction at Evans it would probably be another increase. I do not agree with them that wider vehicles damage trails, I say we build em all wider and let anybody run em