The California state Senate has passed a bill that would give the California Department of Transportation authority to prohibit long trucks from traveling on certain state highways.

The bill is the result of a crusade by the sister-in-law of a woman killed 10 years ago when she was involved in a crash with a 65-foot-long milk tanker taking up most of the road as it tried to get around a curve on a narrow, winding mountain road. The bill is nicknamed "Kim's Law" after the victim, Kim Mosqueda.
The bill, which is now in the hands of the Assembly Transportation Committee, also calls for the California Highway Patrol to track truck-length violations and determine whether length contributes to crashes involving big rigs.
According to the Los Angeles Times, a 1989 Caltrans study found that 22% of the state's highways were unsafe for trucks 40 feet or longer. Another 18% were found to be unsafe for even a 30-foot truck, reported the paper.
The California Trucking Assn. and California Farm Bureau Federation opposed the bill. One of CTA's members, a refuse hauler, discovered that the winding country road used to get to the garbage dump could not, under this bill, accommodate the garbage trucks - yet the garbage trucks are the only vehicles on the road, CTA Vice President Warren Hoemann told the paper. Instead of a blanket restriction, he said, lawmakers should consider alternative routes or time-of-day restrictions on large truck travel on certain roads.
The association does, however, support the idea of updating the 1989 study to determine whether truck lengths are a factor in accidents.