You were 5 miles from my house there, of course you were closer than me.......

 

Why does it suck? If he had been driving alert and within road conditions he would have been able to navigate past the stranded cars safely and nothing would have happened in regards to him or his truck. However upon further investigation it has already been shown that he should not have been driving and with his careless actions it's just another black eye on the good drivers out there, as pointed out by Mal's posting of comments made by the general(however stupid and ignorant) public.

 

Actually, they got the truck driver with the failure to maintain. The driver of the Kia is the one that got charged with driving on a suspended and no insurance.

 

trucks have nothing to do with it, everyone knows that Walmart gets all of their stuff from the product fairy

 

Maybe Mal can better tell us about it since he has driven that spot a whole lot Mike. Say the driver was doing everything right up to the point that he swerved, could it have just been a ***** happens type of incident, as in the stars just happened to align properly here? We don't know how far the car was sticking out, maybe he was screwed no matter what he did, if he holds his lane he hits the car, if he swerves he rolls over.

Mal, did they say who was at fault for the whole thing?

 

At the spot where the accident happened, it is in a turn. However, it's a VERY shallow sweeping turn to the right (when heading north). On the left shoulder, it's a standard median (for that area) with roughly enough width for 1.5-2 trucks wide. The right shoulder is much wider. Visibility-wise, you have roughly 1/4-1/2 mile of plain view of the accident scene. When the wreck happened, it was a mostly-sunny day, with no rain or snow, so the view was clear.

According to the news report, the driver of the vehicle that stopped to help the 1st vehicle (with the flat tire), he said he saw the Kia start to swerve and then the truck. Whether it happened in that order, it's hard to say. The Kia "may" have swerved first - just enough to catch the USX driver off guard, which made him "whip" the wheel out of instinct, which caused the trailer to whiplash out of control, causing the rollover.

When I went past the wreck, they'd already pulled the 3 4-wheelers out of the scene. Even in the photo's I've seen in the local news, all 3 of the 4-wheelers are completely off the road surface. But, having a toppled truck hitting them would cause that.

Myself, I'd think that because the traffic was probably a bit on the light-side, the weather nice, the section he wrecked is clear of any hills for a couple of miles, the truck's driver may have just let his mind drift for a few seconds. Seeing the Kia swerve, plus seeing the cars on the shoulder, were just enough to "shock" him into simply over-reacting. At least, that's how I picture it happening in my mind.