Publix truck involved in fatal accident in front of Miami Gardens distribution center

Click the link and look around street view. There's only one sign from where the Publix truck was entering the road. What's even worse is that it is an empty field in the direction that the pickup truck came from, so nothing should have obstructed the driver's visibility. I'm not going to say if the driver saw the vehicle coming or not, but I do see this all the time on local routes where people just pull out and assume other people are just going to stop for them.

 

He's right it was one but from the attached news video it sounds like the pickup truck was traveling on 183rd which doesn't have to stop. The Publix truck blew the stop sign.

 

Yeah, upon closer inspection, it was a Publix truck. What was that smoking thing that flew ahead of the pickup? Reefer tank? Anyway, tough time identifying the pickup driver,,,ya' think? Took their freakin' head off.

 

It had to be the reefer fuel tank. I think Publix’s reefers run 50 gallon tanks. Either way,this is a bad scene all the way around.

 

Ok for those of you saying "He failed to come to a complete stop, it's all his fault" well its not that simple.

Even the dead guy had a responsibility to drive safely. If it can be determined (and I'm sure it will) that the dead guy was speeding, then he will be found partially at fault. Just because one died and one didn't doesn't make the one still alive 100% at fault.

If you want to not be held at all liable, you MUST have clean hands. Meaning you MUST have been doing NOTHING wrong. No speeding, no abrupt lane changes, no drinking, no texting, no breathing, no eating, no pissing, no pooping.....

But seriously, it looks like that truck was WAY over any kind of safe speed limit on that road. I don't know how to calculate it based on distance, but good lawyers do. If he was found to be speeding, then failing to come to a full complete absolute stop wouldn't have saved this guy, especially if the driver went down to like less than 1mph.

This is all assuming a NORMAL jury. Not the group of idiots that found USA truck at fault when a 4 wheeler that was drunk crossed the median and slammed into them head on and yet USA truck was blamed for it. Those are just idiot jurors.

 

Stop signs mean stop. They don't mean roll slowly through if you feel like it. If he had stopped it's likely he would've seen what was about to happen. We can't know that for certain though so it might not have changed anything. But don't make excuses for people not stopping at stop signs. Any rookies out there reading this need to think about consequences to actions. The driver tried to save a fraction of a second by not stopping and look what happened. That driver and Publix are facing a huge lawsuit and going to lose all because he didn't stop. That one little wrong decision made this preventable.

 

Okay, hold on now. Every single one of us has rolled a stop sign to keep from using the clutch, I've done it a million times. I still do today in my Jeep( to eliminate 1st gear), providing no cops. This is one of the few times that bit the driver in the aXX. I agree, even dead, a jury will find they were negligent and at a safe speed could have easily been avoided. Drug and alcohol tests should be in the Publix drivers favor. After all, it was closing time, no?

 

And speed limit sign means "don't go faster than this." Like I said, not coming to a total stop does put the living driver at some degree of fault, but not 100% since the other driver was speeding. Especially since the truck had started pulling out several seconds before being hit, he could have come to a complete stop and still had time to start pulling out and get hit.

 

Yeah but had he come to a complete stop and the wreck still happens it would be hard to say he had any fault. Not stopping makes him partly at fault.

I'm not harping on this to beat up on that Publix driver. He doesn't need that and I feel bad for him. It's just something that can be learned from. Come to a complete stop at stop signs.

Truck drivers are always going to get the raw deal when push comes to shove with law enforcement or lawyers. That's why you can't ever give them anything easily avoided like running a stop sign...

 

I don't do it in my semi truck. Never have. It's a bad habit. Now in my personal vehicle, yeah millions of times. But there's a $$$$$$$ target out here on every semi truck that isn't on ordinary motorists in private cars. The lawyers are looking to truckers and carriers for a big pay day and there's too much liability to make stupid mistakes like rolling thru stop signs.