The Investigators: Why are concrete mixers rolling over?

ATLANTA (WXIA) – The 22-year-old driver had no way to escape the path of a 35 ton concrete mixer headed right for his car.

Bennett Alterman was stopped at the intersection of 14th Street and Hemphill last May when, according to multiple witnesses, the driver of the concrete truck ran two red lights. Swerving to avoid cars in every direction, the driver eventually lost his fight against physics.

The cement mixer rolled over and landed on top of Bennett's car.

The video captured on a Georgia Tech Police surveillance camera, and an iPhone in the hands of bystander Jameel Cornelius, shows a desperate rescue effort. The police and firefighters were on the scene within seconds, but ordinary citizens jumped into action to pry Bennett from the intertwined wreckage of the concrete truck and his own car.

Bennett's Lexus was almost unrecognizable. The roof and windshield were gone, and the car's interior was almost entirely replaced with the back-end of the concrete mixer.

Somehow there was just enough room for Bennett Alterman. He was alive and bleeding from a few relatively minor cuts.

"My hand, head, left torso hurts," Bennett told his rescuers. "My jaw kind of hurts," he added.

Bystanders successfully extricated Bennett from the wreckage in one piece. One asked how he was feeling. The 22 year-old answered, "Surprisingly okay." He then glanced over to the nearly 70,000 pound truck that had flattened his Lexus and added, "considering that just landed on my car."

There were other survivors of the same wreck, including former Atlanta mayor and UN ambassador Andrew Young. "It was a miracle because there were five people in that accident, and all of us walked away," Young said.

Part of the truck had landed on the hood of Young's Mercedes.

"These trucks are much too dangerous to be speeding, an they can't stop," Young said.

The police report from the crash shows the truck belonged to Ready Mix USA, a concrete company with plants throughout North Georgia. The driver was cited for driving too fast for conditions and disobeying the traffic signal. On camera, one witness told an officer, "this guy ran both red lights," pointing to the concrete truck.

Just five days before the Atlanta crash, there was a nearly identical crash in Decatur involving the rollover another Ready Mix USA concrete truck.

The truck driver was give the same citations – driving too fast for conditions and failure to obey a traffic signal – after three witnesses said the concrete mixer ran the red light and rolled over, according to the Decatur Police report.

A driver was pinned inside her crushed Audi. She also survived several minutes trapped under the drum of a concrete mixer.

While there's no way to know why two different drivers for the same company would speed and run traffic signals, there are questions about how those drivers are compensated and whether there are incentives to cut corners.

The 11Alive Investigators discovered a 2011 federal lawsuit filed against Ready Mix USA by its own drivers who complained they were working more than 40 hours a week without overtime pay. Ready Mix USA won the case because the company had obtained a federal exemption to switch from paying drivers by the hour to paying them by the load.

When drivers are paid by the hour, it costs them nothing to wait at a red light.  In fact they are paid while they wait. When drivers are paid by the load, there's a built-in incentive for them to make more deliveries in the same amount of time. A string of red lights can add up to fewer deliveries, and therefore less money in their pocket.

The clock is also ticking from the moment water is mixed with the concrete at the plant. Drivers have about 90 minutes to get the mixture out before it hardens inside the truck. That 90 minutes includes getting to the job site, 15-to-20 minutes discharging the concrete, and finally removing any excess on site or back at the plant where the final remnants are washed out with a flush of water.

Depending on how much is left inside, it can take hammers, chisels, and jackhammers to remove the hardened concrete from the mixer if they don't make it in time.

We asked Ready Mix USA if its drivers are still paid by the load, if the company has made any changes since the two rollovers last May, and whether it offers any kind of safety incentives for drivers. The company replied with the following statement:

"The safety of our employees and the communities in which we operate is the first priority for Ready Mix USA. At this time, however, Ready Mix USA is not able to comment on your specific inquiries."

The 11Alive Investigators recorded mixer trucks from multiple companies accelerating through yellow lights, and even running red lights at Armour Drive and I-85. We watched driver after driver for Ready Mix USA treating the right on red leading to the interstate onramp as if it were green. Most didn't stop, and some didn't even slow down before making a right on red.

Training materials for drivers at another company show turns at speed – particularly right turns – are the most precarious moments for a loaded concrete mixer. The inertia of up to 40,000 pounds of concrete makes the top-heavy truck roll over at relatively low speeds.

An empty truck weighs about 28,000 pounds, so the concrete weights more than the truck itself. From a physics standpoint, the concrete is driving the truck instead of the other way around.

Because of the spinning drum, some of the concrete sticks to the driver's side of the barrel, making the truck heavier on its left side. Drivers refer to this as the "heavy side of the truck" and crash videos reviewed by The Investigators showed concrete mixers are more likely to tip over toward the driver's side.

In the five days between the Decatur and Atlanta rollover crashes, Georgia's Department of Transportation removed a cap that limited most concrete trucks to 80 percent of their capacity for state jobs. The new regulations, put in place the Friday before the Andrew Young crash, allow those trucks to carry another 8,000 pounds of concrete to state highway projects.

A fully loaded truck has a center of gravity that is just above the driver's head.

The Georgia Ready Mixed Concrete Association is championing a new device that is helping at least one local concrete company change the incentives for drivers. Vulcan Concrete already pays its drivers by the hour instead of by the load, but the company has seen a vast improvement in driver safety since August when it added a special camera to its trucks.

Called DriveCam, the device actually has two cameras – one pointing inside the cab, the other pointing toward the road in front of the truck. It's constantly recording to a file buffer, but saves the video and audio only when triggered by an accelerometer.

"Excessive braking, or accelerating, swerves or speedy turns – that will all trigger an event," said Jimmy Cotty with the Georgia Ready Mixed Concrete Association.

The recorded event preserves several seconds of video from the moments before the device was triggered. A supervisor receives an email with the video attached.

While Vulcan uses the videos to coach drivers with what the GRMCA's Cotty calls "teachable moments," the company is also rewarding drivers for avoiding crashes.

Vulcan gave us a few clips showing drivers forced to slam the brakes to avoid hitting cars and even a teen who ran in front of a concrete truck. For avoiding those collisions, the drivers were given gift cards and a pat on the back.

The goal is to prevent rollover accidents before they happen. One crash can cost lives, payouts to victims, and more than a quarter of a million dollars just for the damaged concrete mixer.

"Being safe is just good for business," Cotty said. He added that other members are looking at DriveCam for their existing vehicles, and most new trucks will come with them built-in.

Andrew Young hopes the attention his survival brought to the issue will make concrete drivers and their employers rethink the dynamics. "I guess I was so happy that I walked away, that I never thought about who was to blame," Young said. "I was just grateful to God for surviving."