Gold Bar, WA — A tractor-trailer crossed into oncoming traffic last Friday, hitting a pickup truck just east of Gold Bar, Washington. It happened on U.S. 2, sometime that evening.
The collision pushed the pickup truck off the highway and into a ditch. Both drivers were injured in the accident and were taken to Valley General Hospital in Monroe with minor injuries. Both men are from Bothell, Washington.
Reports say that police are going to ticket the driver for speeding.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary
It’s a little ironic that both the most unusual circumstances and the most obvious circumstances often get the same basic response: “How did that happen?” If the accident is big enough, we ask that question because we find it so hard to imagine how it even happened. But when we ask, “How did that happen” when talking about something that is painfully obvious, what we’re really saying is, “Are you kidding me?”
So how did this wreck happen? There aren’t many things more obvious to the drivers of commercial vehicles than the importance of keeping your vehicle in your own lane, yet here we have a truck driver (a professional driver, I might add) who found himself driving into oncoming traffic, seriously injuring another motorist. Fortunately, for the victim, finding out the “how” part of accidents is something that police officers do a good job of, and we’ll soon have a police report covering the big “how” questions surrounding this wreck. Consequently, maybe a better and more important question then becomes, “Why did this happen,” and that’s something that only an investigation into the trucking company, how they hire their drivers, how they train their drivers, and their safety policies is likely to answer.
— Grossman Law Offices
