The actions of a Tennessee mother may have prevented a tragedy from occurring. Having barely avoided a head-on collision with an out-of-control 18 wheeler truck, she then pursued the truck and managed to save the truck driver after the truck had left the road.
The woman got out of her car at the site of the crash and discovered the truck was still in drive. She then managed to set the air brakes in place. The driver apparently had experienced a medical emergency and was unresponsive as the truck was driving down the road. Witnesses to the truck accident claim that the woman had saved the man’s life.
It was extremely fortunate that no one else was injured in this accident. The woman was driving in the car with her two children when she saw the truck approaching. The truck continued to weave in and out of the lanes on the roadway, and it may only have been because the hazard lights were on that collisions with the truck did not occur.
Accidents can occur in any motor vehicle. However, the consequences of an accident with a truck as the one described above can obviously be much more severe. Trucks are large and cumbersome to begin with, and even attentive drivers have difficulty operating these trucks or preventing such vehicles from going out-of-control under certain circumstances.
We’ve long known of practices of truck companies of requiring truckers to travel long and sometimes arduous road trips. Though there are now laws in place restricting the hours that drivers work and miles that they can travel during a certain period of time, these laws are often ignored by employers. That’s why personal injury attorneys will often name the employer in a lawsuit rather than just the individual operating the truck.
We don’t know what the medical emergency was that resulted in the truck driver to lose control. Doctors are currently running tests in an attempt to make such a determination.
Source: News Channel 5, “Woman Helps Stop Runaway 18-Wheeler,” April 23, 2013
