PARK CITY — There’s concern about trucks on the road in and around Park City after a roadside inspection turned up a lot of safety issues.
A sting operation on Marsac Avenue last month resulted in 58 violations handed out for just 16 trucks, with six of them removed from service. The safety inspection, on November 21, was less than two months after a runaway dump truck barely missed a bus, another vehicle, and then rolled over near the Old Town roundabout hitting a pickup truck.
The Park City Council is greatly concerned over the results from the safety-sting. At a recent meeting covered by the Park Record, several councilors expressed surprise at how many vehicles were ordered out of service and looked ahead at what could happen.
“If you just imagine the bus that barely got missed — if that had been a Sundance bus full of people when the truck came down through here,” says city councilor Steve Joyce.
The council hopes it can use the data from the roadside inspection to get the Legislature to increase money for more safety measures and into enforcement.
Park City Manager Diane Foster told the Record the police department does enforce Marsac Avenue when state resources are not available. That road, S.R. 224, is part of the state highway system and is monitored by local police, the Utah Highway Patrol, and the Utah Department of Transportation.
City councilor Steve Joyce issued a dire warning about the high percentage of trucks which were taken off the road. “It’s the fact that as long as you keep getting 20-percent {failures}, you have a fundamental problem that’s going to result in a bunch of people dying,” says Joyce.