BELLVIEW, TN — Christopher Fikes was killed in an accident with a tractor-trailer in Bellview, Tennessee on Saturday, October 25th, 2014. The article from the Elk Valley Times said that the accident happened sometime Saturday afternoon.
21-year-old Christopher Fikes was killed when the Suzuki Forenza he was driving hit a tractor-trailer while driving on Harbin Road. The car struck the back of the tractor-trailer, which was parked on the northbound side of Harbin.
EMTs rushed Fikes to Lincoln Medical Center where he succumbed to his injuries.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol is working on the accident investigation at this time.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary:
With this accident, a lot of fingers are already pointing at the driver of the car, but we need to examine a few angles before we make the mistake of wrongly faulting a driver. What would remove the fault of a driver hitting a parked tractor-trailer? Well, if the truck was parked somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, for one. We handled a case with a very similar fact pattern, but with some investigative work we found that the truck had parked in the emergency lane to use relieve himself. Since emergency lanes are for breakdowns or other road issues – not bathroom breaks or naps, the trucking company was found responsible for the accident. Furthermore, Google Earth images of the road show that there isn’t much of a shoulder to pull onto in the event of an emergency, so if the truck was sticking partially into the lanes of traffic, that is also a situation where the trucking company would have some tough questions to answer.
— Grossman Law Offices
