[HN Gopher] New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
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New Orleans's Car-Crash Conspiracy
Author : Geekette
Score : 39 points
Date : 2026-04-13 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It sure would be nice if we had an actual economy around here.
| That being said, I have definitely been given a speeding ticket
| by state police on that stretch of I-10 well before this all
| happened, and when I had a car crash under the Claiborne
| expressway on the Sundays when people drag race under the bridge
| I assure you these "runners" were nowhere to be found. Possibly
| because the local biker gang whose bikes the other party hit
| before me dragged him back to the scene of the accident for the
| responding officer to interview. I do remember someone in the
| crowd that helped me open my door saying "oh you hurt? Oh you got
| hurt you got hurt bad you got hurt in your spine, etc.." kind of
| prompting me and/or fishing for a response so who knows if that
| was them or just that the general mentality has permeated the
| community.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Note the owner of the auto body shop and alleged leader of the
| fraud ring was indicted for murdering one of his co-conspirators
| who flipped and was becoming a witness:
|
| https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/witness-in-louisian...
|
| > Ryan Harris and Jovanna Gardner were indicted Monday for
| witness tampering through murder and conspiracy to retaliate
| against a witness through murder in addition to mail and wire
| fraud for their alleged participation in the staged wrecks.
|
| > The pair are accused in the Sept. 22, 2020, execution-style
| shooting of Cornelius Garrison, who had secretly been cooperating
| with the FBI, was a major setback as authorities tried to climb
| the ladder from small-time scammers and street-level organizers
| to the attorneys and doctors whom they say raked in millions of
| dollars through bogus lawsuits and even unnecessary surgeries.
|
| > So far, the case has led to 52 people being indicted and 44 of
| them pleading guilty, but only a single attorney, Danny Patrick
| Keating, has entered a guilty in exchange for his cooperation.
| vablings wrote:
| It really feels like the FBI got this man killed with a sloppy
| indictment. The fact that information that only could have come
| from Garrison was directly the reason he was executed
| themafia wrote:
| > and today's large trucks are so computerized that they operate
| almost like airplanes
|
| Nonsense. Almost no vehicle even comes with anything like this
| installed. Some carriers will add driver monitoring computers,
| and they will emit tones under certain conditions, hard breaking,
| lane departure, too little following distance; however, to
| compare these simple alerts to the level of automation in an
| aircraft is just daffy.
|
| Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and bridge
| underpass limits is still a significant challenge. So these are
| never built into any truck I've ever seen. Every driver has a
| third party device connected up for this purpose. Since those do
| a terrible job with satellite views most drivers _also_ use a
| cellphone for the additional navigation assistance it can
| provide.
|
| On top of that you have things like Jake Breaks, Air Suspension
| controls, and Differential controls that are important for
| operating the vehicle but are not at all automated.
|
| Another factor is weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for
| this. After you pick up your load you're probably going to hit a
| Love's or other fuel station so you can use the CAT scale to
| weigh your truck. If there is too much weight on one axle you
| need to move your tandems to redistribute the weight. You can be
| underweight but still get an overweight ticket if you don't
| manage this correctly. California has specific limits as to how
| far your axle can be from your kingpin.
| adolph wrote:
| > weight distribuiton. The truck has nothing for this
|
| Could this be inferred from the air suspension controls?
|
| https://www.airliftcompany.com/workshop/finding-correct-air-...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Damn. There's a product in there somewhere.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Just finding a GPS that understands vehicle heights and
| bridge underpass limits is still a significant challenge
|
| Apparently for human drivers as well. Just this weekend, an
| overpass near my house had a rig stuck because the driver
| failed to realize his load was taller than the overpass.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This happens all the time. A truck may be equipped with
| systems that know the heights of bridges, but it can't or at
| least might not know the height of the load. That's why
| bridges are constantly getting wrecked by loads with
| indeterminant heights, like equipment on trailers.
| bahmboo wrote:
| Yes this jumped out at me too. It isn't remotely true. The
| opposite is more accurate: I'd wager that at least half the
| trucks on the road are built more like small planes from the
| 60s WRT to operational systems.
| inejge wrote:
| https://archive.ph/yvUA3
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Interesting read. This may be unfair to Louisiana based on this
| case, but I've heard the USA described as a federation of a bunch
| of states and some 3rd world countries.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| I think you can find something bad in every state, even "rich"
| ones.
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