Skidmore, TX — The local news reports out of Skidmore and Beeville have confirmed that there was a wreck yesterday (Monday, November 2, 2015) just north of Skidmore that left two students injured. They said that two students were hurt after their school bus was hit by a delivery truck on Highway 181. This caused a 15-vehicle pileup as a result.
This was on Monday morning, in between Skidmore and Beeville.
Apparently, a school bus had just stopped to pick up some students that morning when it pulled back onto Highway 181 and was promptly rear-ended by a deliver semi-truck for Hygeia milk products. It appears that a different company was pulling the Hygeia trailer, but their name wasn’t disclosed.
In total, only two students aboard were sent to a hospital with injuries. After the accident, 13 other vehicles also collided with one another as traffic slowed down. However, nobody else was harmed.
Police said that foggy conditions were a major factor here, which explains why 13 other vehicles were involved.
Map of Skidmore
Commentary:
If I had to guess here, I’d say that the delivery truck driver was working for a separate company, contracted by Hygeia or their parent company, Dean Foods. So which would be responsible for an accident like this, Hygeia, the parent company, or the trucker?
Well, it might be al three of them, but it’s going to boil down to the relationship between all three. A lot of companies try to act like their workers are actually “independent contractors” and therefore claim they aren’t responsible for any negligent actions that result in accidents. The problem is that the law looks at the relationship between the company and the worker/contractor/employee and uses that to determine whether the employer ought to be held responsible.
I don’t know what kind of companies were involved here, obviously, but I can tell you that it’s very difficult for an employer to “disown” their employee when it comes to accidents like this one. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
I wish there were a little more information about what happened here because it sounds like this semi-truck delivery driver has some explaining to do. Is there a good reason (and fog isn’t a good reason) this trucker rear-ended the bus? If it was foggy, then slow down or maybe get off the road entirely, and that’s especially true for large commercial trucks that have a hard time slowing down in emergency situations.
— Grossman Law Offices
