Tractor-Trailer Driver Charged in Crash That Killed Mom, 2 Sons

Oh my, this is so heartbreaking.. prayers. .

 

sucks for everyone involved especially the victims. I even feel bad for the driver he had to learn a hard lesson that will stick with him forever. Why he was doing a uturn on a highway beats me, if I miss a turn I just take a couple more miles and backtrack. I have done Uturns in deserted areas but this will definitely make me think twice.

 

no kidding FLO...thats awful......

 

Lawrence has U turns all over it, that are legal for trucks...I hope this man didn't pull the u-ie just out of impatience...

EDIT;
Watch the video, there's no way he was making a legal U. Look at where he is in the road, look at the sides of the road (NJ builds right hand turns that whip back into intersections for legal U turns) and look at how hard he has that tractor pulled to the side of that trailer.
This guy is going down on some manslaughter charges for sure.

 

yeah NJ has the jug handle u turns...we used to del to Florence NJ all the time....you come up, make a right, then a left and back to the light where you can make a left again, to go back the way you came....

 

The story is very sad, and I always hate to hear about people getting hurt or killed. This story has a lot of questions though. First off, the driver made a bad choice, and did a U-Turn where he shouldn't have. But He did not hit the car. The car hit him. He was turned 90 degrees across the highway, when the SUV hit him. The damage done was from the speed the SUV was traveling at. That section of road is a 55 MPH zone, yet I see people flying past me all the time, doing 70 or more.

In the amount of time it took the driver to turn 90 degrees, that SUV should have seen him doing it from 300 or more feet away. I am not trying to take blame away from the driver, but trying to be fair. The truck turned in front of the SUV, but the SUV did nothing to avoid the truck. No skid marks, no swerving from one lane to another to avoid the truck. That makes me wonder what the driver was doing just before impact. Was she texting? Was she she yapping on the phone? Was she looking through her console for a CD to put in the player? I don't know, but I do know she should have been able to at least slow down before hitting the truck.

People these days just don't take driving seriously enough. They drive too fast, and pay little or no attention to what is going on 5 seconds ahead of them.

I would like to know the truck driver's side of the story. Maybe he saw the SUV coming, but figured it was not moving as fast? Maybe he missed a gear, and stopped? I am sure we will never know his side, since we would never hang any blame on the driver that died.

 

i showed this video to my husband....and asked.."guess the suv couldnt see that 70' truck in front of him huh?".....

i dont mean that mean...its tragic no matter who is at fault....but thank you for your post...

 

I watched the video too and I just wonder if he was actually did the jug handle to turn left and the suv ran the redlight and plowed into the side of him. If the suv was going fast enough when it hit, I wonder if the momentum would have swung the trailer causing the tractor to jack knife? Just a thought.

 

the truck driver did do an illegal u turn. the jughandle that connects with darrah lane is on the northbound side. they were going south. the sin of this whole thing is that @ 200 feet down the road is a jughandle to turn back north that you can clearly see from where the accident happened. all he had to do was drive another 30 seconds, take that jughandle and he could have turned back north protected at a light.

wonder on this, maybe the car driver wasn't behind the truck but beside it, and once the truck started his turn, the car (in the left land) had NO WHERE to go. concrete barrier to the left and not enough time to swerve across 2 lanes, jump the curb, avoid trees or a telephone pole and safely land in the grass just to avoid a guy who can't read and obey a sign on the right that says no left turn, and another overhead sign that says no left turn.

nice try on blaming the victim, but get your victim right. the wife wasn't driving, it was the husband. the only thing you forgot to say was she might have been putting makeup on.