My Thoughts, Responses, and Discussion of the Safety Features of Teton Pass
Hello, if you're reviewing this from JH News and Guide I want to thank you for your time and consideration. Most of what I've written here is based in my dissatisfaction with the discussion around safety measures on Teton Pass. I think there are many more important discussion we should be having and this is the best way I could think of to put my thoughts out there. I have done my best to be accurate and respectful and I in no way intend to antagonize anyone. I've added links to sources where I can and I've done my best to make it clear that these are only my opinions. If there are parts of this page that would prevent my opinion piece from being published in the paper I would be more than willing to update the content to avoid that. Thank you again for your time. (I'll remove this section before Wednesday incase my piece is published.)
A first foundational principle
I’d like to start by acknowledging something that I think people generally don’t talk about enough. Driving is the most dangerous thing we do every day without even taking into account Teton Pass. We’ve largely accepted and normalized this risk but I think it’s worth keeping in mind any time we talk about the safety of a vehicle or highway.
On the Safety of Commercial Traffic over Teton Pass
I’d At the Teton Pass safety meeting on August 3rd two people spoke about the risks and safety measures for heavy trucks driving over Teton Pass. One was David Schofield, a retired highway patrolman and DOT safety specialist, and one was Opie Garvin, the owner of Yellow Iron Excavating and Waste Removal. Both claimed that weight is not the problem on Teton Pass and that the problems on the pass are education and maintenance. While I agree that education and maintenance are immensely important, and that improving both are well worth our time and efforts, I object to the idea that weight is not the problem and believe that it is a disingenuous argument. Based on my reading of the timeline of articles about crashes on Teton Pass that the JH News and Guide put together, 44 out of 61 articles involved large vehicles where I believe weight was a factor.** 72%. Maybe some of these accidents wouldn't have happened with better education and maintenance but we can not guarantee every driver has those two things without other significant changes to Teton Pass. Additionally, if weight wasn't a problem then I would expect that the percentage of accidents involving any given vehicle type to match the percentage of those vehicles that go over Teton Pass. Based on my observations the vast majority of vehicles driving Teton Pass are passenger vehicles. Why then is the percentage of accidents that involved a large vehicle so high if not because weight is a problem? The list of articles that the News and Guide put together is not comprehensive of the serious accidents on Teton Pass but I would guess that this discrepancy will still hold true when someone goes through the records and determines a more concrete number.
Physics also dictates that heavier vehicles lead to higher consequences. If there were two runaway vehicles going the same speed, one being a 60,000lbs truck and one Toyota RAV4 that weighs 4,500lbs, the truck has 13.34 times the energy or 13.34 times destructive power of the RAV4. As a result, we need to be more certain that a large vehicle won't become a runway, not less. We need it to be more likely that a large vehicle will make it down the pass safely, not less. We do not currently have any of those guarantees, whether it be passing lanes, sufficient runaway ramps or arrestors, or other safety features.
**In my counting I left out the two articles about the big slide since it did not include vehicles. I also included a runaway vehicle that was mentioned in the description of another article but that did not have its own article.
On the Safety of CDL Certified Drivers Going Over Teton Pass
While Opie Garvin ostensibly wants commercial traffic to continue to be allowed over Teton pass, I believe he and Dave Schofield both gave some of the best arguments for why commercial traffic should not be allowed over Teton Pass. Schofield said of his own trucking career “I didn't know the first thing about driving a truck, but I had a CDL. Okay, a CDL basically, when you get it, or you go to school to get it, what it teaches you is how to pass the CDL test to get your CDL. It doesn't teach you how to be a truck driver.” Shortly after, Garvin said “You get these guys go to Sage Trucking. I've had them at my office. ‘Yep, I can drive truck. I went to Sage Trucking.’ ‘Perfect, let's train you.’ We go out in the truck, they can't drive a truck. They can't, but they give them a license to drive.”
In both of the above quotes Schofield and Garvin are ostensibly saying that our current permitting process for commercial vehicles, the process that grants someone a Commercial Drivers License (CDL), does not adequately prepare a CDL holder for the driving conditions on Teton Pass. If this federally regulated permitting system does not adequately prepare drivers for Teton Pass, why are they allowed to drive it in the first place?
The second comment Garvin made that I would like to highlight is with regard to the truck arrestor on Teton Pass:
“I mean, I got to be honest with you, the truck arrester works, but I got to be honest, if I came off that hill and I'd driven that hill and I'd seen the truck arrester, well, I'm going to hit a flat spot. I think I can make it. It's a hard decision to make to take the arrester. I got to be honest with you, when we had the old sand runoffs, a guy knew, ‘Hey, I'm going into deep sand, the chances of me wrecking and tearing up my rig are probably minimal.’”
If some of our most experienced truck drivers in the area, who have been driving Teton Pass for decades, aren’t willing to use the truck arrestor then why would we expect someone to use it who has never seen it before? As a mechanical engineer I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about something called Human Centered or User Centered Design. The basic idea is that a product can be designed well, it can be effective, it can check all of the boxes for functionality, but if it doesn’t provide a good experience for the user it may cancel out any of its other benefits. That could be a state of the art MRI machine that is easier for doctors and nurses to use but gives every patient that goes inside it a panic attack. The data might look good but the experience of using it doesn't. I believe this is the case with the truck arrestor. I believe that on paper it is effective, it is safe, and if a truck goes into it will be stopped. Non of that matters if the people driving the runaway vehicles aren’t willing to enter it in the first place.
Finally, I’ll quote Garvin one more time. In the middle of his remarks he said, “You come over the hill, you come off the pass 10 miles an hour. You got cars stacked up behind you, everybody's in a hurry, and that's when they start going around you and that's when they start". While it isn’t explicitly stated, I believe that Garvin was commenting on dangerous passing behavior on Teton Pass. It is certainly widespread and incredibly dangerous. Just look at @tetonpassholes and @yourdailypass on instagram. They show examples of this constantly. While I agree that this passing behavior is dangerous, I think I draw a different conclusion that Garvin would.
A heavy truck going 10-20mph down the whole pass, with its hazard lights on, may not lose control, but it is still a hazard. Driving slower than half of the listed speed limit for the entirety of the pass, when thousands of people are trying to commute over the pass, is not safe. It is not a driver's fault if they are frustrated and want to pass you. I’m not condoning unsafe passing but it happens all the time and we need account for it, not blame justifiably frustrated drivers. Maybe it was safe before when a slow truck would only hold up a few cars but but when a truck is holding up 50, 100, or more cars that is not safe, regardless of if the truck makes it to the bottom of the pass without losing its brakes. Furthermore, it is no longer just five or ten trucks per day causing this level of traffic. It is 100+ every weekday of the summer. I understand that some trucking companies have been driving Teton Pass Safely for decades without incident. Just because they have been able to do so safely so far doesn't mean that they can safely do so now. Teton Pass is different than it was twenty, ten, or even five years ago. Maybe the conditions that allowed large vehicles and trucking companies to drive Teton Pass have come to an end.
On the Safety of Commercial Traffic over Teton Pass
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On the Current State of Enforcement on Teton Pass
One of the statements said in response to tightening restrictions on Teton Pass is that the enforcement of these restrictions would be too complicated to be practical. To this I ask, what are the current methods of enforcement and what would enforcement of further restrictions require?
Right now, our only restriction in summer months is the 60,000lb weight limit. As far as I’ve been able to discern, there are currently only two ways to enforce this restriction. The first is the weigh station which, other than last week, isn’t staffed and only requires commercial vehicles to stop. In my opinion, the weigh station isn’t actually used as a tool for enforcement.
The second method of enforcement is the weigh in motion system. In this case I think we all need a better understanding of how the system works. I think it’s clear that when an overweight vehicle is detected by the weigh in motion system, lights flash telling the driver to turn around, and the system sends a notification to Wyoming highway patrol. What happens after that? If we make the assumption that there are enough resources for there to always be an officer that can respond (an assumption that doesn’t seem to be true), then every truck that the weigh in motion detects as overweight can be pulled over. At that point, can the responding officer write the driver a ticket? No. The weigh in motion system does not meet the requirements of ASTM XXXXX, and therefore a ticket can not be written based on its reading. The only way an officer can write a ticket is if the truck has recently gone through a DOT weigh station and has its weight recorded in its logbook. If that isn’t the case then a ticket can’t be written based on the vehicle’s weight. That means that all of the local that traffic we see is in essence exempt from getting ticketed for being overweight over Teton Pass. This premise is further highlighted by NIST Handbook 44 where the section on weigh in motion systems is titled “Weigh-In-Motion Systems – Used for Vehicle Enforcement Screening”. In this case, being a screening system means that it alone is insufficient for enforcement and must be paired with something like a staffed weigh station or mobile scales.
https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/nist-handbook-44-current-edition
A note on the use of mobile scales. I know mobile scales were mentioned at the safety meeting on Aug 3rd. I haven’t seen or heard more discussion of them but if Wyoming Highway Patrol or Teton County Sheriffs were outfitted and certified to use mobile scales I believe that would be a means of enforcement that could work with the weigh in motion system.
As of now, given that the weigh station is almost never staffed and officers can’t write tickets based on the weigh in motion system, I would argue that the weight restriction on Teton Pass is essentially unenforced. As the group Make Teton Pass Safer stated, out of 1,587 overweight triggers from the weigh in motion system over 18 months in 2025 and 2026, only 1.8% or 28 triggers led to a highway patrol intercept*. We do not know how many of those vehicles might have turned around after the weigh in motion notified them that they were overweight but if personal experience is any metric, very few turned around or were able to turn around at that point.
*This data was collected through public inquires to WYDOT on the number of weigh in motion triggers and to Wyoming Highway Patrol” on the number of overnight intercepts.
What Would Enforcement of a Stricter Restriction Look Like?
The group Make Teton Pass Safer has repeatedly called for immediate action on Teton Pass including prohibiting RVs and trailers, as well as temporarily reducing the weight limit to 40,000 lbs. In response to this request, many people have said that this would be problematic because that could prevent the start bus from going over Teton Pass. This includes Bob Hammond, resident engineer for the Wyoming Department of Transportation’s Jackson District, who said restricting weight limits for certain vehicles and not all vehicles could be an enforcement nightmare.
As I stated above, it doesn’t seem that we really have a good enforcement method as is, so lets imagine what enforcement would look like in this hypothetical scenario. I would propose that a restriction of large vehicles would include all trailers, RVs, dump trucks, semis, box trucks, busses, and non-passenger commercial vehicles. If this were the case, I would argue that enforcement would be far simpler for officers. If they saw one of these vehicles they could pull it over and write a ticket. I believe that a visual means of enforcement would actually be enforceable rather than the quantitive requirement of a weight restriction. I also don’t see an exception for the Start Bus being any more complicated. I trust that all of our Highway Patrol and Sheriff’s officers are cable of distinguishing between a Start Bus and any other bus that wouldn’t be allowed.
I don’t know what it would take, whether it be legislation or otherwise, but this is the restriction that I would argue for as a year round safety measure. It would address the major causes of accidents on Teton Pass and it would be readily enforceable.
“Statistically there aren’t that many accidents”
The number of cars going over Teton Pass every day is being used to dilute the statistics of accidents on the Pass. Darin Westby, the director of highway patrol said “There are 8,000 cars a day that go over that pass, so I mean, statistically speaking, it’s a relatively safe pass.” To that I simply ask, if there are the same number of accidents and fatalities next year as there are this year, but an additional 200 vehicles per day go over the pass, would you say that the pass has gotten safer? I wouldn’t. More vehicles don’t mean that the road is safer, they mean that the consequences of a runaway vehicle continue to rise.
https://891khol.org/teton-pass-to-ban-large-vehicles-without-new-safety-check/
I have heard a lot of people comparing the 12 miles of Teton Pass to other 12 mile sections of road. They ask if the number of accidents and fatalities we have is higher than some hypothetical section of road. That may be the case but I think that that is the wrong way to frame this problem. Driving is inherently dangerous. Statistically it is the most dangerous thing we do every day. Accidents happen everywhere, and we do our best to prevent them, but most of the time we don’t know where and why an accident is going to happen. In those cases there might not be much we can do because maybe there are five accidents, caused by five different things, with no concrete changes that could have prevented them. That is not the situation on Teton Pass. We know the cause of the accidents is brake failure. We know the accidents will occur on the lower section of the descents.
To put it another way, if the timing on a stoplight at a major intersection was just off enough that lights overlapped for a second and that caused 3-4 accidents with fatalities or critical injuries per year, it wouldn’t matter how many vehicles went through that intersection everyday. That intersection would be deemed unsafe and something would be done. The fix in that case is easier but the situation is the same for Teton Pass. There is a direct and foreseeable cause for these accidents. Our public officials should be obligated to fix it and anything shy of that should be considered negligent.
The Problems on Teton Pass are Far Greater Than Just the accidents that occur
The accidents that occur aren’t the only evidence of the problem on Teton Pass. If you sit at the old pass road or in Wilson and watch the vehicles coming down you will see smoking brakes every single day. I do my best not to watch the road and yet one evening while watching hummingbirds I saw a semi pass with brakes so hot the lit up the highway at dusk. I waited to pull out onto the road this this week and a box truck went by with smoking brakes. The problem is constant and we are constantly on the edge of having another runaway vehicle. I believe that if the pass were any longer we would have runaways so frequently that something would have been done years ago. Teton pass sits at the edge of safety, always one misstep away from disaster. Just because the majority of large vehicles don’t lose their brakes doesn’t mean they are safe or that we are safe. Our brakes should not be smoking under normal operation. You should not be able to smell brakes constantly next to a major highway. Add the number of vehicles with visibly smoking brakes to the number of accidents on Teton Pass and you will see a statistic that I believe does a much better job of representing the risks and dangers on Teton Pass.
On The New Safe Pass System
Over the course of writing these thoughts, WYDOT as announced, in two different releases, the planned Safe Pass education program. While I’m glad someone is doing something, I fail to see how this will solve our problems and leaves me with more questions than answers. I want to be hopeful but I am skeptical and without more information it’s hard not to see this as an attempt to appease everyone who is not happy with the current state of Teton Pass.
The press release for the safe pass program includes a few claims that I would like to point out further. It claims that “The program will require drivers operating recreational vehicles, towing trailers or vehicles who have a gross vehicle weight and/or a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds to complete the program and self-certify their ability to navigate mountain driving.”
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How will drivers be required to do this?
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How will this requirement be enforced?
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Can drivers pull over and submit the certification day of?
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How will visitors know that this program is in effect, especially if they’re expected to complete it ahead of time?
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Will officers be randomly pulling over large vehicles and more importantly private vehicles they suspect of being over 10,000lbs to see if they have this certification? I know that officers can inspect commercial vehicles as they see fit but is does a hunch that a vehicle is over 10,000lbs constitute probable cause?
My single greatest hope for the implementation of this program is that all of the signs around Teton Pass will be changed to say that the weight limit for the pass is 10,000 lbs unless drivers have a prior certification from the Safe Pass program. If the signs only change to say 60,000 lbs with certification I fail to see how much would change. Even if they all list the limit as 10,000 lbs there is still the question of enforcement and consequences. As I have discussed above, it does not seem that we have the resources to enforce the current restrictions, let alone additional ones.
I think it is good that this information will be available to drivers, but without more clarity on how it will be implemented, communicated, and enforced I remain skeptical that this could just end up being a publicity stunt. I’m sure we will learn more in the coming weeks and months and I will update my thoughts as more information is released.
I discussed above that I believe that inaction to do anything on Teton Pass should be considered negligent. The Safe Pass program is clearly a response to the claim that the problem is just education and maintenance. I don’t believe that to be the case but I do ask, if this program is implemented and a vehicle that has passed this certification looses it’s brakes and kills someone, will that be evidence that education isn’t enough? Will that be considered reason to further restrict large vehicles on Teton Pass?
I’d also like to point out that, according to the JH News and Guide, Laiton McMinn, the driver of the dump truck in the July 7th crash, had an air brake endorsement that “requires instruction and testing on mountain-driving practices, including selecting a safe speed, choosing the correct gear before beginning a descent, recognizing brake failure and using proper braking techniques”. If that training included testing on mountain driving and still wasn’t enough to prevent a runaway truck, why do we expect a self certification to do any better? I would argue that even if we already had the Safe Pass program, it seems unlikely that Nicholas Besobrasow and David Page would still be alive. I hope that more information on this program will change my mind.
The Problems on Teton Pass are Far Greater Than Just the accidents that occur
I’d