A one-year-old child was fatally injured in a truck accident yesterday and his mother injured as well. The Highway Patrol indicates that the mother span was traveling east eastbound when hit by a westbound semi truck that.
According to authorities, the van driver turned left and was hit by the truck, which was passing on the shoulder of the road, to get around another semi truck that had stopped to make a turn.
Miraculously, a two-year-old brother survived the truck wreck, although his condition is unknown. The truck driver was unharmed.
This is another tragic example of what appears to be a truck driver in a hurry to get to a destination. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations are designed to protect the public by setting specific hours of service which a truck driver can be driving a rig.
It is very basic highway safety that motorists should not use the shoulder of the road to bypass another vehicle.
While this same fact pattern could have resulted in serious injury or death if the vehicle passing on the shoulder was a car, injury is much more likely with an 18 -- Wheeler.
Commercial truck drivers are just that, professional drivers, and as such are held to a higher safety standard in some cases.
It is especially disheartening to learn of a young child's death do to an accident that most likely could have been prevented.
Greg Baumgartner is an 18 wheeler accident attorney in Houston and has handled truck accidents, 18-wheeler accident lawsuits and other wrongful death cases for over 20 years.
