Detroit, MI — Last week, a truck driver from TLC Waste Disposal Services was killed in the Detroit area after his dump truck crashed into a pedestrian bridge on M-39, causing it to collapse. The driver who died was identified as Almont resident Stanford Doll, 54 years old.
This happened at about 6:00 a.m. along M-39, near Cathedral Street, last Friday morning. Doll was driving his dump truck along M-30 that morning while the bed of his truck was apparently raised up.
As he passed underneath the pedestrian bridge at Cathedral Street, his truck bed crashed into it and caused the bridge to collapse. The accident killed Doll at the scene and police think he might not have been wearing his seat belt.
Right now, they’re looking at the dump truck and whether it had indicator lights to show whether the dump truck’s bed was raised up.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary:
I don’t know about you, but the first thing that popped into my mind when I read this story was, “Isn’t there some sort of alarm or light that would tell the driver the dump truck’s bed was up?” Though that’s not a feature required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (which sets rules and regulations for commercial trucks like this one), it seems like a pretty good idea. If the driver can’t see behind him to check on the bed of the truck, then how is he to know that everything is all right?
Let’s talk about this from a legal perspective for a minute, though. Has anyone stopped to check and see if this truck had perhaps malfunctioned? Was the truck bed supposed to be raised up that morning? Did it raise up by itself, or did the driver just fail to double-check before he drove away? If I were the manufacturer of this dump truck, I would be sweating bullets right now, worrying about some defect in the truck being discovered. If it turns out that a manufacturing defect caused the dump truck’s bed to raise up, then the manufacturer of the truck needs to be taken to task and held accountable.
— Grossman Law Offices
