So that refuse collection vehicles can negotiate bends: Please keep bends clear!
11.11.2020 – Emptying waste garbage cans in residential streets is increasingly becoming a challenge for refuse truck drivers. Several times a day, they are confronted with blocked corners or cars parked too far onto the road. Stadtwerke Offenbach's Stadtservice is now launching an information campaign to draw residents' attention to the fact that incorrectly parked vehicles can prevent waste from being collected from their doorsteps.
The eye-catching orange flyers with the slogan "Let us through - we are wider than you think" will be distributed on the first tours from next week. They also provide information on why a certain lane width must remain clear. The Stadtservice's garbage can inspector, who drives in front of the respective tour, hangs them on vehicles that protrude too far into the road. If the appeal does not help, the public order office will follow up with parking tickets or have the vehicle towed away.
Three meters of road width must be kept clear
According to road traffic regulations, cars may only be parked in such a way that three meters of lane width remain free. The 2.55-metre-wide and ten-metre-long refuse collection vehicles would then have just over 20 centimetres of space on each side. This is also quite a challenge, but for the drivers it is a daily routine. Turning into a road with a refuse collection vehicle also requires a lot of free space as well as practice: about five meters in the entire turning area are required for this and even after the bend, the large truck is only back in a straight lane after about ten meters.
However, this space is increasingly parked up. Often, the refuse trucks can no longer fit through, no matter how tactful the driver is, and have to stop at the junction. The refuse collectors then run to the houses and pull the bins up to the vehicle. Depending on how many times this has happened that day, they then leave the emptied garbage cans at the intersection. Not because they don't feel like walking back, but because the schedule of their colleagues from the waste disposal department doesn't allow for additional walking.
"Where our garbage trucks can't get through, no fire truck can get through"
"Our route schedule is precisely timed and must be adhered to, because otherwise the calculation of our waste charges is no longer correct," says Christian Loose, deputy head of the City of Offenbach's own waste management company. "If our employees always brought back all the garbage cans that we push to the vehicle by hand due to blocked streets, we would not be able to drive to entire streets at the end of the tour due to a lack of time."
To ensure that this does not happen in the future, the flyers are now asking drivers to be considerate and park responsibly. Not just for the sake of emptying garbage cans, but also because it puts people's lives at risk in an emergency: "Where our refuse collection vehicles can't get through, neither can a fire engine from the fire department," says Christian Loose.
November 12, 2020