Waterloo, IA — Police said there was a possibly fatal accident south of Waterloo this past Tuesday afternoon, July 14, after a dump truck crashed into a car on Highway 21. They said that 37-year old Katherine Keister and a 1-year old boy in her car were both badly injured after Robert Stedman’s dump truck allegedly ran a stop sign and crashed into them.
This happened around 1:45 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, at the intersection of Highway 21 and Schrock Road.
The police said that Stedman was driving his dump truck that afternoon along Highway 21/Hawkeye Road when he came to the intersection with Schrock Road and, for some reason, didn’t obey his stop sign.
His truck rolled through the intersection and into the path of Katherine Keister’s passing car, which resulted in a major accident.
Both Katherine Keister and a 1-year old boy in her vehicle were taken to a hospital for their injuries while Stedman was also taken away. Their conditions weren’t clear, but the paramedics indicated that at least some of the injuries were very severe.
Update: Robert Stedman died in this accident, the police confirmed.
Map of the Accident
View from the Road
Commentary:
Given the time of day and how visible the area is on that stretch of road, something had to have gone very wrong for this accident to have happened like this. Did anyone witness what happened? Does anyone know more why the dump truck allegedly rolled the stop sign?
In a lot of the accidents I’ve handled in the past, the first place we start investigating is the truck driver and his background. When something so obvious as rolling a stop sign appears to be the cause, it’s time to start looking at whether this driver was properly trained and qualified to be behind the wheel in the first place, whether he had a history of accidents, and what the ECM data on his truck tells us.
You might think that sounds harsh; after all, the driver probably didn’t mean to cause the accident. However, let me remind my readers that commercial driving is a serious responsibility and these drivers are thoroughly trained and tested so that they can be safe on the road. Accidents like this are simply unacceptable, and someone needs to answer for it.
Furthermore, it’s the principle of the matter. If you read a story in the news about a doctor who botched someone’s surgery and just said he was sorry, it wouldn’t be enough, would it? No, because he’s a trained and licensed professional who is thoroughly tested and trained to practice medicine in a safe and helpful way. Sound familiar to how I just described truck drivers? That’s because the principle is the same. If a professional trucker causes an accident through his negligence hurts someone else, it’s not exactly the same thing as two Honda Civics rear-ending each other.
As a society, we have to decide when it’s okay for truck drivers to cause accidents and when it’s not. I would hope that we’d all decide that, no, it’s never OK for truckers to cause accidents, but that requires people to take action when things like this happen. That’s part of the reason I lend my voice to this blog, to educate people who might not understand how these things work and what kinds of rights they have.
— Grossman Law Offices
