Henrico, VA — The driver of a tractor-trailer was injured in a single-vehicle rollover accident in Henrico, Virginia, on Wednesday, December 31, 2014. The accident took place on the ramp going from Interstate 95 to Interstate 295, just north of the city.
According to reports, Douglas King was speeding when he took the ramp and overturned. Emergency workers had to be called in to help extricate King from the cab of the truck. He was then taken to a local hospital. Officials have described his injuries as non-life-threatening.
No one else was involved in the accident and no other injuries were reported.
King was hauling more than 40,000 pounds of paper at the time of the crash, several rolls of which rolled away down the embankment, complicating the accident’s cleanup.
Police have said that King will be charged with reckless driving.
Scene of the Accident
Commentary
News reports say that the driver of the tractor-trailer was speeding at the time of the accident. That may be the case, but there’s another avenue here that I think is worth exploring. Tractor-trailers have a history of rolling over not because all of their drivers are reckless and don’t know how to drive, but because they’re generally unsafe vehicles that suffer from this sort of thing. There are circumstances in which a truck is put through stresses it can’t handle and might roll over. Taking a ramp from one interstate to another shouldn’t be one of them. If this accident wasn’t caused because of something the driver did, we have to ask, what caused it? Was there something wrong with the truck itself? If that’s the case, this it’s possible that liability for this accident may fall on the manufacturer. I know a lot of people would be eager to blame this on the driver and move on, but I’ve seen plenty of accidents in which an accident occurred because the vehicle just wasn’t designed well enough. Unfortunately, those accidents make me wonder if we’re seeing something similar here.
— Grossman Law Offices
