Truck Wreck of the Day

As a trucking trial attorney, I see it all too often.  And now again.  Early yesterday morning a tractor trailer loaded with sand ran a stop sign in south central Florida, striking a van on the right side. and killing six men.  According to an Associated Press report by Christine Armario, investigators were still trying to determine while the West Coast Aggregate 18-wheeler failed to stop for the stop sign. Authorities were still seeking to identify the six victims who were thought to be HIspanic.

Cristela Guerra and Janine Zeitlin of the Fort Myers News-Press

reported that the tractor-trailer was  hauling sand out of Ortona Sand Co., five to six miles from where the accident occurred.  The van, registered to a farm labor contractor, was not authorized to transport farm workers and had not passed vehicle safety inspections. 

According to USDOT information, West Coast Aggregate Haulers is based in Venice, Florida, and reports operation of only one power unit, hauling aggregate on interstate trips only. In the past 24 months West Coast Aggregate had two truck inspections, failing one of them. 

Florida requires only $300,000 liability insurance for trucks of intrastate haulers with a gross vehicle weight of 44,000 to 80,000 pounds, compared with the minimum $750,000 required for interstate truckers and the measly $100,000 required for intrastate haulers in Georgia.  However, we often find in Georgia that trucks hauling timber and  building materials such as sand actually carry $1 million liability coverage due to contractual requirements.

A Florida truck driver admitted that he was on his cell phone yesterday when he slammed into a school bus, killing a 13-year-old student. According to a report by Austin Miller of the Ocala Star-Banner, the school bus, which had stopped to let children off , had its warning lights on and stop signs out. The truck driver said he never saw the bus. He  failed to stop for it and rammed the school bus forward 294 feet. The bus was fully engulfed in flames. 

See our recent posts on cell phone distractions and the absence of seat belts on busses.

As a trucking accident attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, I see a wide range of messes resulting from overturned tractor trailers. We had a case last year in which a load of frozen hamburger meat spilled all over I-75 in south Georgia. The state trooper said his biggest problem was crowd control, as local deputies tried to salvage the load for a big cookout.

Today’s news feeds included two sharply contrasting cargo spills in truck wrecks — ammonia nitrate on I-20 in eastern Georgia and Oreo cookies in Illinois.

At Morris, Illinois, about 50 miles south of Chicago, a truck loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreo cookies overturned, spilling cookies all over the highway. No, it wasn’t in a collision with a milk truck.

A potentially more serious situation was a wreck on I-20 about 45 miles west of Augusta, Georgia.  About 2:30 AM, a truck loaded with 24 tons of ammonium nitrate used both as fertilizer and as an oxidyzing agent in explosives, overturned and began leaking. Three people were reported injured.

Ammonium nitrate is used in powerful military explosives such as the "daisy cutter" bomb.  It has been involved in a number of distastrous accidental explosions, most notably the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995 which killed 168 (or perhaps 169) people and  the Texas City explosion on a ship in 1947 which killed 547. 

Ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel is quite a volatile mix. If this spill occurred in a heavily populated area, and a spark was added, it could have had monumentally catastrophic consequences.

Motor carriers haulilng ammonium nitrate must comply with strict "HazMat" shipping regulations and carry at least $5,000,000 liability insurance. "HazMat" truck drivers must clear security check by the Department of Homeland Security. 

"HazMat" truck drivers have told me in emotional detail of the added stress involved in their jobs. Recently one who delivers gasoline to service stations five or six nights per week told me how every year he has worked in that job, one or two fellow drivers — usually those who are short on training and experience — have died in explosions and fires.  He explained how the divorce rates for HazMat drivers are apparently higher than average, which he attributed to the combination of higher pay and higher stress.

If I were a truck driver, I think I’d rather stick with loads of Oreos.

 

A tractor trailer making an illegal u-turn on a bridge in pre-dawn darkness caused a Laurens County, Georgia, crash yesterday, as a car became wedged under the trailer, according to a report by Bernie O’Donnell of WMAZ-TV in Macon.  Problems with side conspicuity andtrailer underride are common. When we see motor carrier accidents in the very early morning, we naturally look into questions of hours of service violations and driver fatigue affecting attentiveness and judgment.

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. 

At Bamberg, SC, on 1/7/08, a beer truck, a log truck and two empty Freightliners were involved in a fiery pileup when the log truck lost a tire.  The beer truck burned completely and its driver died. The two empty trucks were driven by brothers  Two men from Rincon, Georgia were driving the empty Freightliners.  One of them, whose truck also burned, was flown to a hospital. See news report from Chantelle Janelle at WIS-TV in Columbia.

Late Friday, a fiery crash in a tunnel on I-5 at Santa Clarita north of Los Angeles consumed 28 tractor trailers and one passenger car, killing three people and injuring at least ten. It all  began about 11 p.m. Friday when two big rigs collided on the rain-slickened highway. As crashes continued throughout the 550-foot-long tunnel, five tractor-trailers burst into flames, and the fire quickly spread.  This led to a chain reaction as other trucks entered the dark, twisting tunnel. As the fire burns out southbound traffic is detoured through mountain roads, officials are just beginning to evaluate structural damage to the tunnel

I am familiar with this area because my son is attending college nearby. At least he seldom has reason to get on I-5 except to go to LAX for visits home.

Police in Kings Mountain, NC, say a driver’s lack of understanding of the English language appears to have led to a violent wreck between a train and a tractor-trailer.  Truck driver Ricardo Ercia was crossing several train lines in town at South Battleground Avenue and Oak Street when he didn’t obey a traffic sign calling for drivers to go through a second rail line crossing. Fortunatley, there were no serious injuries. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations require that truck drivers be able to read and understand the English language.

Use of foreign truck drivers and allowing Mexican trucking companies to operate nationwide in the US has been an increasingly controversial topic in the trucking industry.  For the last few years it has become increasingly evident that if the trucking industry could outsource driving jobs to third world countries to save money, it would do so.