Driver gets 110 years for Colorado accident

Absurd!
He was not in a position to make ratiomal decisions under panic, after brakes failed.
He was a mass of paralyzed body, not much different than someone who gets a heart attack

His fault was before, when he failed to operate the vehicle properly.
The responsibility is the same but the guilt is different.

 

It’s absurd to compare this to someone having a heart attack.

 

Only medically speaking...
If you are under panic, you are just as much thoughtless. I mean, in both cases, the result would be the same. If he had a heart attack, would you have more sympathy for him?

 

Castellano 03 LLC trucking of a Texas carried the minimum liability insurance , had next to zero cash or assets and declared bankruptcy days after the accident.

When I last checked, no owner(s) have never been charged in fact I doubt if anyone knows who the owners are (Texas doesn’t keep track of these details). I got the address from the FMCSA and did a google street view....vacant house in a residential neighborhood. The company officer listed was posting on FB from Cuba. That’s why they call it a Limited Liability Company.

The driver had spent his entire “career” (limited such as it was) in flat-as-piss-on-a-plate-Texas. This was his 1st trip out of Texas and his company dispatched him across the great divide in Colorado loaded to the tits.

Happily Retired has it nailed.....the consumer gets what it pays for and they have nobody to blame but themselves

 

I expect the driver had never seen a truck ramp before that day so I can *maybe* understand in the moment why he didn’t take the ramp, however since the accident, I have been waiting for the defense to explain why the video shows no brake smoke or brake lights and it seems I am left to wonder.

 

You can’t convince me that a heart attack and being in a panic over one’s own stupid actions are one and the same. If someone has a medical emergency such as a heart attack then the outcome is what it is, it cannot be controlled.

Several years ago I came over a hill on US151 in Wisconsin to find a car sideways across both lanes of the roadway, my instinct was to hit the brakes and stop, but it was snowing and my brakes did absolutely nothing. The car was facing the right shoulder so I anticipated that they were going to go forward, not wanting to hit them I took my truck into the median. I had a choice and put MYSELF in danger instead of possibly hurting someone else or taking their life. I guess I could’ve panicked and broadsided them and you would give me a free pass for killing someone when I had other options.

This guy had options, he should’ve taken that runaway ramp, He could’ve taken that truck off the right side anytime passed that. He made a conscious decision to drive like a lunatic across all lanes and even use the shoulder to try and PROTECT HIMSELF. Anyone who would’ve been in such a panic as you are saying would’ve froze up and it all would’ve been over at the first curve. He murdered those people.

 

I would give you a free pass for hitting the car in that case and so would every criminal court. Not your fault nor the fault of your fatherless kids that their car got sideways. Not to mention innocent people could’ve been killed if your truck cleared the median into oncoming traffic

 

I just gave him the benefit of the doubt.
It may be deplorable and completely shameful but not everyone scared for their life is ready to do an honorable act and sacrifice themselves to save others, which ditching the truck or even taking it to the runaway ramp might have been in his mind. He was a killer and a coward but not a murderer.

 

Agreed. If I’m a juror I think it falls somewhere between 2nd degree and vehiclular manslaughter but to get the manslaughter he has to explain to me why no smoke or no brake lights.

 

Now when you mentioned no brake lights or no evidence of braking, it raises my suspicions.
I'd still need more, a lot more for them to prove that it was on purpose.