CLAIBORNE PARISH, LA — A truck driver was flown to the hospital in a helicopter following a tanker truck accident that happened in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana on Friday, April 10th, 2015. The accident happened sometime Friday morning, according to the local news reports.
One person was hurt after the tanker truck they were driving crashed on Highway 9. The truck driver told authorities he’d swerved to avoid another vehicle when it collided with a bridge pillar and exploded.
The driver was flown to University Health Hospital where an update on his condition or the nature of his injuries was unavailable.
No other injuries were mentioned in the news.
Louisiana State Police closed the highway for the accident cleanup and investigation.
Scene of the Accident
View of the Road
Commentary:
The news mentioned two things that really need to be looked into much more extensively. First of all, the truck driver said he had to swerve to avoid another vehicle, so was this other vehicle driving erratically? Did the car cut the tanker truck off, causing the truck driver to swerve? Most people don’t know this, but there doesn’t necessarily have to be contact between vehicles to be considered a “hit-and-run” in the classical sense. We’ve handled accidents where drivers swerved erratically and pushed other vehicles on the road before driving off, only to be tracked down and charged later on down the road.
On the other hand, does anybody have a clue as to why the impact resulted in an explosion? Did the liquid the tanker truck was hauling explode, or was it the gas tanks mounted on the side of the truck itself erupt in the collision? Most people would be astonished to learn the fire statistics behind tractor-trailer accidents. If there were a passenger car released on the market with similar statistics, I honestly believe the public would be incensed, and there wouldn’t be a news channel on television that wasn’t covering the debacle. Unfortunately, these trucks and commercial vehicles are not mass-market consumer grade vehicles, so nobody seems to care, but I think truck manufacturers need to be put in a position to take accountability for when these fires make accidents much, much worse.
— Grossman Law Offices
