Eideard

Photo by Jamie Rogers

A 37-year-old man picking items out of a dumpster was seriously injured Thursday when the dumpster was emptied into a garbage truck in Vancouver’s West End.

The binner was in serious condition in hospital with broken bones and severe bruising. He was rescued after several people heard him crying for help when the truck was in the 800 block of Cardero Street.

The man told police he was in a dumpster near Burrard and Davie streets when it was picked up by the truck, a distance of about 16 blocks from where he was rescued.

Police said garbage collection continued, which means he had a number of additional dumpster-loads of garbage dumped on him as the Waste Control Service truck followed its route through the West End.

Vancouver police Const. Jana McGuinness said a woman who heard the man’s cries ran into the lane off Cardero Street to alert the driver, who immediately stopped, called 911 and opened the back of the truck…

The driver was so shaken he booked off work after the incident, said Waste Control Service manager Jeremy Crawford, adding that to his knowledge, it was the first incident of its kind involving the company.

Police investigated the incident as a “casualty call” and did not lay blame, calling it an accident.

Climbing into a dumpster regardless of motivation is reasonably dumb. If you know anything about where you’re scavenging, you should know that drivers work alone – and dumpsters are designed for automated pickup.

No one is going to climb up top and peer inside to see if it’s clear of scavengers. Whether they’re people or rodents.

Nordic customs officials have arrested a truck driver after he tried to illegally import 28 tons of Chinese garlic into the European Union.

The driver was intercepted last month as he drove the pungent truckload from Norway, which is outside the EU and where garlic is exempt from customs’ duties, into Sweden, where garlic is subject to a 9.6 percent EU-wide duty.

Smuggling of cheaply produced Chinese garlic into the EU is on the rise, with around 1,200 tons brought into the 27-nation bloc via Norway since 2009, according to the European Anti-Fraud Office, known as OLAF.

“The interception of the lorry was the result of a carefully prepared initiative coordinated by OLAF,” the EU said in a statement. “This action came about due to the excellent cooperation provided by Norwegian and Swedish customs.”

Whoop-de-fracking-doo.

Imposing a duty of almost 10% is just crap protectionism. Not that that is outside the framework of most EU political decisions, anyway.

He rode inside one of these instead of underneath

A South African man is still alive despite shooting himself in the head and then being hit by a lorry.

The man, from Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, was in a car when he shot himself, an emergency worker told the BBC.

The bullet got lodged in his skull without hitting his brain. He then got out of the car to seek help and was hit by a heavy lorry…

He is now being treated in a Durban hospital.

The man, who has not been named, was in a critical but stable condition, spokesman for the Netcare private emergency service Jeffrey Wicks said.

“I have never seen anything like this before in my career.”

If at first you don’t succeed…

Spanish police say they have seized more than 800kg (1,760lbs) of cocaine from a lorry disguised as an official backup vehicle for the Dakar rally.

The lorry was infiltrated into the race, which now takes place in South America, and loaded with cocaine before being shipped to Spain, police said.

The final destination for the drugs was the Spanish island of Ibiza, home to a major drugs trafficking ring…

The vehicle was sent from Bilbao in Spain to Argentina where it was loaded with the cocaine during a stage of the famous auto and motorcycle rally, held from 1-16 January.

It then followed the race to its conclusion before being shipped back to Bilbao, where it was seized by police when it arrived on Friday.

“The vehicle had been totally transformed to adapt it to its supposed participation in the competition as a support truck, with publicity and logos of the event painted on its side,” a police statement said.

The police said they also seized 15,000 ecstasy pills, hashish, guns and 47,000 euros in cash.

Pretty smooth stunt, actually. No doubt there’s already a movie deal in the works.

You can vary the plot between “superior police analysis” or a “paid mole” turned up the drug smuggling operation. Or even a mechanic at the Dakar Rally happening upon the truth.

A haulage firm began an investigation after a video emerged that appears to show a lorry driver speeding along a motorway unaware that a car was trapped under its bumper.

The mobile phone footage shows an Arclid Transport lorry travelling in the fast lane on the A1(M) near Wetherby, West Yorkshire, with a blue Renault Clio trapped sideways under its bumper.

The footage, believed to have been filmed in January by passengers in a vehicle on the same road, showed the driver of the Clio – who has not so far been identified – appearing to try to release the car by pressing the brakes…

It is believed the car driver emerged without any serious injuries once both vehicles had come to a stop. The footage was later posted on YouTube.

A spokesman for Cheshire-based Arclid Transport, which specialises in transporting bulk powders and granular products throughout the UK, said an investigation had begun…

A West Yorkshire police spokesman said: “On 13 January at around 8.30am, we attended a road traffic collision on the southbound A1 near Wetherby, to a report that a blue Renault Clio had been in collision with an HGV…

“At the time of our attendance, there were no injuries and both vehicles were on the hard shoulder of the motorway.

“As a result, at the time, the incident was treated as a damage-only collision. However, in light of the new evidence, we are re-investigating the collision and the matter has been passed to our major collision inquiry team. Inquiries are ongoing.”

I can understand why the truck driver wouldn’t bring up any discussion of how the accident proceeded. Why did the Renault driver keep quiet, eh?

UPDATE: The driver of the Renault was Rona Williams. She was on her mobile begging for help about the time this video was shot.

“Is there a problem, officer?”

A lorry driver was pulled up by police in China – after driving for hundreds of miles with a sheet of cardboard covering his broken windscreen.

Mr Li drove by sticking his head out of the side window – in freezing conditions – or by peering through tiny holes in the cardboard, reports China News Network.

Traffic officers ordered him to pull over after spotting him on the Jinggang’ao Highway in Henan province.

“The weather was extremely cold, but we saw a lorry with a cardboard windscreen – and the driver had his head out of the side window all the time,” said a police spokesman.

Mr Li jumped down from the cab with a face that was purple from the cold. He told officers he had been in an accident in Hubei province several days earlier but did not have time to repair it properly because of his tight delivery schedule.

You have to understand. We are an extended family of Dodge truck owners. I would solve the need for energy for all the planet with 32-litre Cummins turbo-diesel engines if possible.

I’m pleased with the beginnings of the new Fiat-controlled Chrysler Corporation. Especially the truck division simply known – now – as RAM.

But, this is one of the dumbest fucking commercials I’ve ever seen!

Well – it’s been around forever. But, an old friend reminded me of this, today.

Don’t piss off a woman who owns a backhoe!

Thanks, David Snyder

The local mine is a mere three miles away and is clearly visible from the offices of the Brecon Mountain Railway in Merthyr Tydfil.

But regulations about how it can be transported mean that coal for the railway’s newly converted steam train comes not from the south Wales valleys but from Siberia, 3,000 miles away.

Coal from the Ffos-y-Fran opencast mine in Merthyr has to be moved by rail rather than road. As there is no rail link from the mine to the railway, coal for the converted engine comes from the wilds of Siberia via rail to the ports, then container ship to Hull, then by road to Merthyr…

The railway owner, Jayne Hills said it was even more galling because the local coal was perfect for use in a steam locomotive. It generates steam quickly and maintains its heat…

“Being from Merthyr, where everyone has a relative who was a coal miner, or knew somebody who was a miner, this seems just crazy,” she said.

The mine operator, Miller Argent, said it was not just the railway that had to source coal from faraway locations despite there being a mine close by. Local coal merchants who supply homes, pubs, schools and hospitals were also having to look elsewhere for their supply because the mine’s planning permission stipulated it could only move coal by rail.

See. It’s not the Republicans – alone – who invented Red Tape.

Sometimes, I think that nations beginning to fail at imperialism have to do something with excess bureaucrats; so, they put them to work “regulating” the lives of ordinary citizens.

That’s right. Ain’t anything different on the outside.

The U.S. government has imposed the first increase in mileage standards for passenger cars and boosted the floor for sport utilities and pickups beginning with model year 2011 vehicles.

The modest increase of less than 1 mile per gallon for the fleet over current targets for the fleet represents an abbreviated approach by the Obama administration as it confronts industry distress and pressure from California and other states to set their own goals.

The standard, which is expected to cost industry $1.4 billion in vehicle design and other changes, would require compacts, sedans and other passenger cars to average 30.2 miles per gallon in combined city/highway driving, up from the 27.5 mpg standard that was established in the late 1970s under the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program.

Many passenger cars made by overseas manufacturers already meet or exceed the standard.

Just in case you never noticed.

Toyota Motor Corp expects its 2010 Prius hybrid to get 46 mpg while estimates for the Insight hybrid made by Honda Motor Co is 41 mpg.

Detroit’s efforts to revamp its fleet include the Ford Fusion hybrid sedan, due in showrooms this spring, that gets 41 mpg/city.

I’ll just take a line or two to whine about the lack of a smallish-diesel-powered pickup available in the U.S.. Ford makes ‘em. So does Toyota. Just not for the United States.