Truck crash on I-285 kills one
Wednesday morning, 2/20/08, a tractor trailer on I-285 failed to stop for slowing traffic, struck a car, and pushed it into the rear of another tractor trailer. This happened near the intersection of I-20 where there is often a long line of tractor trailers backed up waiting to transition from I-285 to I-20. The driver of the car was killed. See the Atlanta Journal Constitution article by Mike Morris. Proper speed and space management, and maintenance of driver alertness, are essential to safe operation of interstate motor carriers.
Ken Shigley is a trucking and product safety trial attorney based in Atlanta.
This particular type of scenario is also prevalent in California, especially on our major thoroughfares. I just hope that the victim's family have been compensated well.
very sad for the car driver, i offer my condolences to the family. but i do have one question about this particular wreck. if the driver of the car could plainly see that the trailer wasnt going to be able to stop in time, why didnt he/she jump out of the car before the trailer struck? she/he would surely have had time to jump out and run. but i wasnt there so maybe there wasnt time. or the possibliity of her/him not seeing that the trailer couldnt stop
The last reader comment is a great example of a psychological phenomenon of "defensive attribution" we have to guard against on juries. Defensive attribution is a subconscious reaction to the emotion of anxiety and fear. The more seriously injured the victim, the more anxious and fearful jurors may become about facing such a fate themselves, so the more they may need to find a way to blame the victim for his own fate as that enables them to distinguish themselves from the victim and preserve the fantasy of their own invulnerability. In mock jury focus groups, it is common to hear participants say something like “I’m too smart for that to happen to me, so he must have been really stupid to let that happen to him.” The unspoken completion of that statement is, “if I can’t figure out how it’s the victim’s fault, that means such a bad thing could happen to me, and I can’t allow that, so I have to blame the victim here.” Is it reasonable to expect a person stopped for traffic to be able to make a split second determination that a vehicle approaching from the rear will not be able to stop, and to then determine it is safer to jump out of his car into freeway traffic than to remain in the car, and manage to actually get out before the approaching vehicle strikes? Go sit in the driver's seat of your car and practice getting out in under two seconds even when sitting in your own driveway.
