Fog, Drunk Driving Causes Fatal I-44 Accident
On behalf of Brown & Crouppen, P.C. posted in Motor Vehicle Accident on Thursday, September 27, 2012
A tractor-trailer driver died on Interstate 44 near Eureka early in the morning of Sep. 27 when he flipped over his truck trying to avoid a vehicle that had crashed and stalled on the road. While foggy conditions may have been a factor in this fatal accident, the Missouri Highway Patrol also suspected the driver of the stalled vehicle of driving while intoxicated. If true, the driver could be found negligently responsible for the truck driver’s death.
The driver of the 18 wheeler was heading west on I-44. He was a mile west of the Six Flags around 5 a.m. when he happened upon two vehicles stopped on the road. One was a car that had struck a guardrail, spun out and come to a rest in the middle lane of the interstate. The other was a box truck, the driver of which had pulled over onto the shoulder to try to help the car’s driver.
Apparently due to the fog, the semi truck driver did not see the car sitting in the road until the last minute. He swerved, but the truck overturned, fatally injuring him.
The car’s driver suffered moderate injuries in the earlier accident. He was arrested on suspicion of DWI and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. The driver of the box truck does not appear to have been injured in the tractor-trailer accident.
Drunk drivers pose a danger to other motorists and passengers when weather conditions are ideal. When fog is limiting visibility, intoxication can be a recipe for disaster, as this case sadly demonstrates.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Crash near Eureka kills truck driver in dense fog, other driver arrested for DWI,” Sep. 27, 2012