As a Missouri semi truck accident lawyer, I was disappointed to read about a crash that was apparently caused by a truck driver’s failure to stop or slow for traffic in time. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, six people, including the trucker, went to the hospital with mild to moderate injuries after the crash in the afternoon of June 1. The crash took place as traffic slowed on Highway 63 to accommodate another crash that had taken place about 15 minutes earlier. Truck driver Pearl Anderson, 61, of Pine Bluff, Ark., apparently did not notice the stopped traffic, then swerved into the next lane. The resulting crashes knocked three cars off the road, entrapping two people inside and causing the truck to lose its load of rebar.
According to the Columbia Missourian, no one suffered life-threatening injuries, but emergency responders needed 15 to 20 minutes to extract the most severely trapped person from her car. Anderson was reportedly northbound in the highway’s left lane when traffic started slowing, with some cars ahead trying to merge to the right. When she noticed the slowdown, Anderson reportedly swerved and hit the rear ends of three different vehicles, forcing all three off the left side of the road. Her Freightliner then traveled off the road itself, lost its load and came to a stop upright. Driver Janice Palmer, 62, suffered moderate injuries; other occupants suffered mild injuries, including a one-year-old girl. A spokesperson for the Missouri Highway Patrol said the cause of the accident was still under investigation.
I’d be very interested in the Highway Patrol’s conclusions, as a St. Louis tractor-trailer accident attorney. We have recently seen several similar failure-to-slow accidents, including the Highway 40 accident in St. Louis that took three lives and injured 14 other people; and the Oklahoma crash, just over the border from Joplin, that took ten lives. In the Oklahoma case, investigators never did find a clear cause, but in St. Louis, the trucker was eventually accused of distracted driving because he was using his cell phone just before he plowed into stopped traffic. And unfortunately, distraction remains a major problem among truck drivers. In addition to cell phones, truckers are frequently encouraged to drive longer than the law allows to save money, exposing other motorists to dangerously sleep-deprived drivers or drivers using stimulant drugs.
If your family has been affected by a serious crash with a large commercial truck, you should call Carey, Danis & Lowe. Based in St. Louis and Belleville, Ill., we represent people around Missouri and southern Illinois who were hurt in a trucking accident that was no fault of their own. Semi accidents are not like accidents between two ordinary cars; the truck’s greater size and weight frequently translates into more serious injuries for the people inside the smaller vehicle. That means even a minor accident can kill or catastrophically injure victims. When this was the fault of the truck driver or his or her trucking company, our southern Illinois big rig accident lawyers help victims collect financial damages, which they can use to pay their medical bills, make ends meet while they recover and be fairly compensated for permanent losses.
Carey, Danis & Lowe offers free, confidential case evaluations, so you can talk to us about your case at no further risk or obligation. To set upa meeting, call us toll-free at 1-877-678-3400 or send us a message online.
