On a foggy Arkansas morning, a truck driver hauling logs made a split decision to crash his rig when the red lights of a school bus suddenly appeared in the mist.
It’s a moment of reckoning for truckers, when your next move decides the future of those in the vehicle ahead of you. Experienced drivers understand that slamming into a car or bus may not cause you significant injuries. It most certainly will for the passengers of the vehicle that take the impact of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound log hauler. Paul Wiggins most definitely knew that when he took the hit by veering off Highway 7 near rural Ola, Arkansas.
“In the log business, we usually start at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning sometimes. You’ve got fog, but this fog here, I’ve never seen it this thick. All at once, you see these little red lights in front of you, and you know you can’t stop,” Wiggins reportedly said. “I couldn’t live with myself if I had killed some kids or other people.”
Images show Wiggins’ truck laying on the driver’s side, but accounts of the incident indicate it flipped. The driver was reportedly trapped inside the damaged rig for upwards of an hour before help could extract him from the wreckage. With disregard for his own well-being, Wiggins’ first questions were whether he missed the bus and were the children okay.
“I asked them if I missed the bus, and they said ‘yeah, you missed it,’ and that was a big, a big relief,” Wiggins reportedly said.
On the other side of the story was Kenneth Hill, a bus driver for the Two Rivers School District. He could only hear the sounds of a big rig’s brakes screech and a thundering crash as it shot into the ditch. He was picking up one of the last children on his route before school.
“It was almost my last stop of the day. I had about 45 kids on the bus at that time,” Hill reportedly said. “Some of my kids looked at me and said, ‘Mr. Kenneth, that man’s a hero, he saved our life,’ and I said he sure did.”
Paul Wiggins works six days a week hauling logs as an owner-operator. Along with choosing to put his life in jeopardy on the fateful morning, he badly damaged a truck that is the source of his livelihood. A GoFundMe page has been set up to help Wiggins during his recovery and truck repair expenses.
Sources: thetrucker.com, kark.com
Great job, great choice i applaud you. Get well soon.
Was he driving phantom 309
Those log trucks drive like psychopaths. I’ll bet anything that driver was was doing 80mph through that fog. No wonder he had to crash.
And how do you drive?
i drive like u pokey fast and furious, foot to the floor
Your good at bunching things together. Safest drivers I know are in the heavy haul and logging industry. Are you a no jake flatlander? Seen plenty of those rigs on their top.
Driving too fast for conditions usually gets you in trouble, luckily he was able to avoid the collision. Hard lesson
i drive like u pokey fast and furious ,foot to the floor
Drives too fast for conditions, crashes, gets labeled a hero. Yea, that makes sense. 🙄
Don’t see you out there doing the job probably never been in a truck
That was my first thought as well. He was going faster than the weather called for and had to crash to avoid killing innocent people.
Good thing it was a highly visible school bus with bright flashing lights. If it had been a family in a mini van they would be dead; would he still be a hero?
Lol everyone was there and saw the whole thing Whatever if you don’t have something nice to say about something you only read in the news than shut the fuck up stupid
Sounds like too fast for conditions…
I just wonder how fast he was going in the first place. If it was THAT bad, he should’ve been driving a lot slower than he probably was. But then, most logging trucks I’ve seen I’d be surprised if they’d pass a DOT inspection.