Trucker kills family of 6

Used to be that most people thought that was chivalrous and praise worthy. Some of us still do.

 

Leaving your lane in a smooth bore tankers raises your chance of suicide by quite a bit. Hopefully I’ll never have to make one of those decisions.

 

I prefer to keep feeding my family, you can keep the praise and trophies

 

My first driving job was hauling 1200 gallons of pesticides around on a straight truck back in the 80s. I still remember the training video that pointed out the number one cause of driver deaths was rollovers, and that the easiest way to avoid a rollover was to avoid swerving.

I promise to feel real bad every morning when I'm drinking my coffee if some doped-up mom pulls an illegal U-turn into my path and I kill her and her children. I'm sure she would feel real bad for my family if I died instead and my wife had to go back to work at 60 years old. At least, until she got that next toot of blow up her nose. Then she'd forget all about it.

 

For some reason, drivers who have had the misfortune of being the truck chosen for suicide by truck typically feel the way I feel, rather than the way you feel.

Suicide by truck: How it forever impacted a truck driver's life

 

Thoughts and prayers to those family. Only one way to find out what happend is from that dashcam. And I hate to say this but, it's probably another reason it should be a good idea to have a face in camera. To show anything if a driver was paying attention or being distracted. Another thing I'm sure they'll look into is his DOT med card and other health issues.

 

If the mother was any kind of human being she wouldn't have risked harm her children in the first place.

 

I said I'd feel bad, and I meant it. It wasn't sarcasm. But if some rando is going to force me between choosing to save his life over saving my life, I'm going to be "selfish" about it -- "selfish" in quotes because suicide is usually one of the most selfish acts a person can do, particularly when the suicidal person forces another to be the means to their demise.

And in this case, it apparently wasn't intentional suicide, it was mere stupidity. I can't decide which of them was dumber, the one who chose to do a U-turn on the interstate, or the one who decided to follow the leader. It's very sad, especially for the kids, but it is in no way the poor truck driver's fault, despite what some would have you believe.

 

I used to be the workers' comp adjuster for a large mail carrier in California. One of the cases that I had was a driver who hit a guy trying to kill himself, who wasn't successful. 2 years post incident, he was still disabled. (California allows psychiatric workers' comp claims)

It's one thing to expect that you would be ok eventually having killed a driver who put herself in that predicament, it's quite another killing kids who didn't have a choice in the matter. Of course I couldn't prove it, but I believe that most drivers who have survived doing so would wish that they had taken evasive action, especially an action that would have sacrificed themselves rather than grieve for innocent kids.