Urine trouble

[Dave (imported)]

>>>Gee, golly, whizzies, kiddies - Dogs leaving little fetilizer bombs, fast-food-paper-plastic trash out the windows...

>>>The next thing you know someone will stick his ass out the window and take a dump!!!

>>>Dave

‘Urine trouble,’ some states warn lazy truckers

Tens of thousands of 'trucker bombs' litter roads

MSNBC

Updated: 7:55 p.m. ET June 1, 2005

SEATTLE — Roadside litter comes in all shapes and sizes — from dirty diapers to syringes — but there's one category that out-grosses the rest: trucker bombs.

Most drivers whiz along the nation's highways largely oblivious to their roadside surroundings. But next time you are out there, take a closer look.

"As soon as you look for it you’ll see it," says Megan Warfield, litter programs coordinator at Washington state's Department of Ecology. "You just see them glistening in the sun. It’s just gross."

They are trucker bombs, plastic jugs full of urine tossed by truckers, and even non-truckers, who refuse to make a proper potty stop to relieve themselves.

The state hasn't counted how many such jugs are found each year, but a single, small county decided to do its own tally. "In one year," Warfield says, "one crew found 2,666 bottles of urine, 67 feces covered items, not including diapers, and 18 syringes."

It even happens at rest stops. "That’s the mystery," Warfield says. "There’s a bathroom right there, there’s also a trash can."

Handling the goods

Disposing of trucker bombs, aka torpedoes or pee bottles, is a thankless task that in many cases falls to highway cleanup crews.

California has a hazardous waste contractor to deal with human waste. In Washington, a spill response crew is called in to dispose of large volumes of trucker bombs.

Safety experts emphasize that urine is 99 percent sterile and that jugs of it can be moved if crews avoid contact with the liquid, Warfield says. But cleanup crews remain reluctant, with some fearing the liquid could actually be something else also dumped along highways — dangerous chemicals used to make the illegal drug methamphetamine.

$1,025 fine

Hoping to break truckers of the dirty habit, Washington state lawmakers created a "dangerous litter" category in 2002 and increased fines to $1,025 from $95 for general litter.

When it comes to human waste, the dangerous category covers trucker bombs and dirty diapers. Together the accounted for 8,000 pounds of trash collected from state roads last year.

The state has also launched a "Litter and it will hurt" campaign — its first prevention campaign in a decade.

"We have made a little bit of progress," Warfield says, citing a new survey that found 2,000 tons less of roadside litter than in 1999.

The Washington State Patrol issued 3,995 tickets or warnings about litter in 2003, the most recent year for which data is available, nearly 800 fewer than in 2002.

Several other states have taken similar steps to stop truckers from dumping containers of urine. Wyoming this year increased the maximum penalty for littering bodily fluid to nine months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The maximum penalty for other litter is six months in jail and a $750 fine.

Mowers 'hit them, they explode'

In April, Colorado increased its "human waste" fine from $40 to $500. Transportation employees convinced lawmakers of the need for the drastic increase with their tales of finding urine jugs as they mowed roadway ditches. "We hit them, they explode. The operator ends up wearing this stuff," Randy Dobyns told state senators.

Dobyns estimated he picks up at least 50 containers a week, sometimes milk jugs, water bottles or even bags filled with urine. "The folks who dispose of this stuff are very creative in their use of containers," he said.

Some states have gone so far as to appeal to truckers themselves, but Warfield recalls how that backfired on a colleague in Arizona. "He did not get a warm reception," she says.

Poster strategy

Darcy Wilson had another approach after her husband complained of having to pick up trucker bombs left on the grounds of a 10-acre truck stop 30 miles east of Seattle on Interstate 90, a major truck route.

She did some research and found that the state Department of Ecology had made posters that read, "This is not a urinal." The agency was happy to send her the posters, to which she attached an updated sign about the higher state litter fine.

Wilson posted a dozen on light posts and trash cans and says her husband believes he's finding fewer jugs of urine lying around the truck stop.

"People are looking at the fine," she says.

But truckers continue dumping the heavy jugs in trash cans that still have to be emptied. "Truckers don't want to walk into a bathroom" with the jugs, Wilson says, so her husband is urging his boss to order portable bathrooms where truckers could dump the containers in private.

"We'll do anything to not have to pick up that stuff," she says.

Recycling solution?

Unfortunately, a recent breakthrough in diesel filter technology that uses urine won't be helpful.

European researchers are developing a filter that uses animal urine to cut down on harmful emissions. Truckers who use the filter will fill up with the purified urea solution each time they stop for diesel.

But Oliver Kröcher, one of the filter researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich, Switzerland, says using human urine "is not practical at all, since ... very pure urea has to be used" and that wouldn't be the case with urine straight from the source.

"Thus, there is no way to apply this crazy idea," he says.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7912464/

[caviman001 (imported)]

and here in the uk they complain about paper on the roads

[Riverwind (imported)]

The fine is not enough, the offender should also be made to clean a mile of high way.

River

[caviman001 (imported)]

In Newcastle,england The Police Go Around At Night With A Water Bowser Any One Caught Urinating Is Given A Choice Face A Fine Or Clean It Up With Water And A Brush

[Riverwind (imported)]

Once going on a week long camping trip with the scouts, one of the kids in the back seat throw a candy wrapper out the back window. I went about a 1/4 of a mile and stopped. I said to the kid "did I just see you throwing litter out the window?, my two sons in the car let out this OH NO. Every body out of the car, I handed a trash bag to the scout that was guilty and had him and my son to go get the candy wrapper, oh and pick up all the litter between the car and the wrapper. Now sense scouts do thing together I had the other kid in the back see and my older son head up the road on a like mission. I took a bag and went out between the highway (it was a large area between comming and going) and I started picking up litter. Then the High Way Patrol stopped and wondered what was happening, I told him, he smiled, and went on down the road.

The Kid was really pissed at me but the others looked at it as something scouts do. I think what really pissed the kid off was all the cars honking as they passed on there way to camp. A lot of them we knew quite well. I figured there would be something said at the camp fire that night. That kid learned a lesson that day, I doubt he has ever done it again.

Maybe this should be the fine.

River

[Dave (imported)]

by the way - - I do know someone who stuck his ass out the window of a moving vehicle and took a dump. I WASN'T THERE! So don't ask that question.

[george2u2 (imported)]

U R in trouble.

I am a truck driver by the way. Once I was stopped behind a car waiting for a slow moving train.

Out the window came trash.

I got out of the truck, picked up the trash and threw it back in on the two ladies, sloshing ice out of the half full cups.

I said, "We don't litter around here."

The look on their faces was priceless.