LEON COUNTY, TX — Steven Barker died after an accident between a tractor-trailer and a car in Leon County, Texas on Monday, November 17th, 2014. The news article from KBTX said that the accident happened around 5:00 Monday morning.
56-year-old Steven Barker was killed when the vehicle he was driving and a tractor-trailer collided on FM 39 just outside Flynn, Texas. It is not clear from the news report what may have caused the accident, but Public Safety Officials said that the truck’s load may have been too wide for the road it was traveling on.
Barker was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.
Texas Department of Public Safety Officials are investigating the accident.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary:
The news report indicated that the load the truck was carrying may have been too wide for the stretch of road where the accident took place. Now, we have no idea if the wide-load is in any way connected to the cause of the accident, but if it is, then the trucking company is going to be wedged firmly between a rock, and a really hard place. First of all, truck drivers are required to know the dimensions of their load, especially if it is a wide one. Secondly, if there was clear signage on the road with limits on the width of truck loads, then the driver of the tractor-trailer had no business on the road to begin with. Now, the trucking company may say that the truck driver was so far outside the rules that they shouldn’t be held accountable for the accident, but really, these companies are responsible for vetting, hiring, and training these drivers to industry standards, and if they failed to do so, the doctrine of respondeat superior (let the master answer) will show that the trucking company is still responsible, no matter how hard they try to shake that fact.
— Grossman Law Offices
