Trucking Accident

This story found its way on the front page of our paper complete with a picture of a smiling, friendly looking elderly couple.

James and Blanch Whiddon had been married for 65 years. They told relatives recently they could never live without each other. After a car accident, they died three days apart last week.

James, 85, and his wife who was 79, were on their way home from the grocery store September 30th. They had gone to dispute a bill, and did many things together.

Just before noon on U.S. 1 a tractor-trailer ran a red light and James, traveling on a green light, drove his pickup under the trailer.

James died at the scene. His wife was hospitalized in a coma. Both had their seat belts on. Blanch died in three days.

She leaves behind her daughter, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “They wouldn’t have been able to survive without each other,” their daughter, Marie Copeland tells Jacksonville.com. “It’s just a tragedy.”
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With more than 36,000 teen drivers involved in car crashes in Florida last year –and a teen killed every 6.5 minutes nationwide, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles has created an interactive web site to drive home the message of safety on the road.

With great graphics, bold music, and production techniques, TakeTheWheel.net was created by teens for teens. It’s a very powerful and effective way to communicate the truth about the responsibility of taking the wheel, including the facts:

• According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) more than two-thirds of teen passengers and drivers who die in nighttime car crashes are not wearing their seat belts.
• Teens are involved in three times as many fatal crashes as all other drivers.
• Distractions such as loud music, texting, cell phone use, driving tired combined with inexperience and speed and drug use all aggravate the problem.
• In addition to the 36,000 involved in teen crashes last year, more than 479 people were killed in auto accidents where a teenager was behind the wheel.
• Auto accidents remain the number one cause of death for teenagers.

In the teen videos- Alexa tell story of her cousin Mandy, now in a vegetative state, after an accident in December of 2004. She was in a car that was t-boned by another car driven by a student driver.

Alexa says, “She starts to cry and she has feelings she needs to get out but she can’t because of the way she is. Being in an accident and almost dying changes everybody life not just around them, but the whole school. People may not realize it but people have a lot of value. People take their life for granted.”

Dustin watched his 19-year-old cousin, Frankie die after his car flipped 15 times. Frankie had been drinking and driving. His much larger cousin stopped him when depressed and drunk, Dustin tried to get behind the wheel. ” I broke down and cried and my parents came and picked me upl. I will not let anybody get in the car if they’re drunk,” he says.

Megan was in a car that hit the back of a truck, then split into a “V”. Her boyfriend died, as did the driver of the other vehicle. Megan begins crying on camera when she tells her story. “I have friends who street race and they still do it, and I don’t undertand why. If someone is in the car with me I make them put their seatbelt on. I’m really serious about it. You’re not going to die while I’m driving.”

Kudos on talking to teens in a language that matters. I hope every young driver in Florida takes the time to listen to the experiences of people who have suffered from the loss of a loved one. I can happen to you. It happened to them.

The web site is here TakeTheWheel.net.

Incredible details are coming out about a school bus crash in Citra, Florida that killed one 13-year old girl. A tractor-trailer driver was talking on his cell phone when he slammed into the school bus Wednesday. Four bystanders who witnessed the accident ran to the school bus and pulled out half of the students from the burning bus.

The Marion County Superintendent of School Jim Yancy says it amazing most of the students were saved. “This was a tragedy, but it’s also a miracle, he tells the Ocala Star-Banner.

One 13-year old middle school student, Frances M. Schee lost her life.Chris Mann, an elevator installer who stopped to help said, “The kid was lodged and I just couldn’t get her out. There was nothing I could do.” Nine other students were injured- two critically.

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School has barely been in session one week and we have a horrible accident to report involving a school bus, a minivan, and a cement mixer truck.  

One eight-year-old girl is dead and seven other children were injured Friday when they got into an accident in a bus owned by a Boys and Girls Club.  It was transporting 27 Tallahassee-area students from Apalachee Elementary School to the club. 

A cement truck rear-ended the bus while it stopped at a red light. It was waiting in the left-turn lane.  The impact tipped the truck to its side and caused the bus to hit into a minivan that was sitting in front if it. 

8-year-old Roshay Dugans died at Tallahassee memorial Hospital.  The other injured students were treated and released.  Apparently the children sitting in the back of the bus had the fewest number of injuries. 

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A passenger in a car that went the wrong way on U.S. 1 in Georgia and collided head-on with a tractor-trailer Wednesday night has died.  

The accident killed 33-year-old Charles Allen Music of Lyons, Georgia.  He was thrown from the Ford Mustang at the Ware-Charlton County line.

The driver of the Mustang was identified as Joshua Grantham. He was in Shands Hospital reported to be in good condition this morning.

The trucker was taken to Satilla Regional Medical Center in Waycross and was reported to be injured, as was his passenger. No more information is available on their condition because of privacy laws.

For some unknown reason, the Mustang was heading south in the northbound lanes of the highway.  

The collision with the northbound Freightliner truck is under investigation but a contributor to the article says that they likely got on the wrong side of the road somewhere through Waycross. 

No word on whether seat belts were used, but it is somewhat unusual for a driver to survive a passenger unless one was buckled in and one was not. 

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A jury decided last night to convict a Ponte Vedra trucker in the fatal accident on I-95 that resulted in the deaths of two Flagler College students. Miguel Leon was convicted of causing the crash that killed the girls nearly three years ago. He was convicted of vehicular homicide and two counts of reckless driving causing serious bodily injury.

November 19, 2005, students Jessica Kaufmann, 18 and 20-year-old Lindsay Chain were riding in the back of a 2003 Volkswagen, returning to St. Augustine, Florida after their car broke down on the way to Orlando. A friend came and picked them up.

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A government safety study is revealing just who is behind the wheel of that big-rig and bus next to you on the highway. 

The 30-page General Accounting Office (GAO) study, to be released Thursday, shows that more than a half-million commercial tractor-trailer and bus drivers with commercial licenses are also eligible for full disability benefits. 

These are not people sitting at home waiting for benefits. They are still driving 40-ton vehicles, next to you on the highway!

When these drivers have seizures, heart attacks or pass out, hundreds of deaths and injuries have occured.

The Transportation Department reports there were  5,300 people who died in crashes with commercial trucks or busses in 2006, the last year for which statistics are available.  Another 126,000 people were injured.

The GAO reports that sometimes drivers ”doctor shop” to find a doctor who will either overlook their pre-existing health problem. Or the driver will simply fail to mention it in a medical checkup.

Some of the violations mentioned in the report include: a Florida bus driver who used three daily inhalers to fight his lung disease. He told investigators that he “occasionally blacks out and forgets things.”  And that he “gets winded” when he walks to his mailbox.  He had no medical certificate, but does have a commercial driver’s license until 2010.

Big-rig and bus drivers need to make a living too, and we all are living well because of products and food transported across the country. But this situation is out of control.  

Back in 2001, the  federal agency in charge of truckers, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, was charged with completing  eight safety recommendations. So far none has been accomplished – items such as stopping doctor shopping, and setting a minimum health standard before a driver can obtain a commercial license.

It seems reasonable. 

We hope you are never involved in an accident with a bus or tractor-trailer. But if you are you’ll need to contact an experienced attorney who knows about the black box onboard a truck and the information it contains that can help your case. An accident attorney knows the number of hours a trucker can legally drive and when he is in violation.  And an experienced  attorney knows how to find witnesses and contact them for information while it is still available.  Visit the Trucking Question & Answer section of our Web site, or call us.

You never want to be involved in a trucking accident. If you are, you never want to go it alone.   Farah and Farah is here to help.

It was one of the most horrible trucking accidents this area can
remember.

On January 25, 2006, a tractor-trailer driver reportedly fell asleep behind the wheel and drove his trailer into a car full of Lake Butler children waiting for a school bus.

All seven children died in an inferno. They were all from the same family.  And five children onboard a bus that was then hit by the car, not only witnessed the accident but were injured and taken to the hospital.

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The smoking cessation drug has already been linked to vivid dreams, suicide, depression and psychosis.  And now organizations in charge of public safety are getting worried.

This week, the Federal Aviation Administration banned the use of the smoking cessation drug for pilots and air traffic controllers.

Now the trucking industry wants drivers of big-rigs to stay off the drug.

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Americans are frightened by heavy and big trucks on our nation’s highway. We don’t need a poll to tell us that, but a poll exists anyway.

Taken by Lake Research Partners, it finds that 66 percent of drivers oppose a proposal to allow bigger trucks carrying heavier loads on the highways.  The American people have to share the roads and they find that two or three-trailers are even more frightning than a single-trailer.  That sentiment crossed race, income, sex, age and region.

The poll was released to coordinate with a demonstration project being proposed by shippers and lobbyists for trucking companies that would allow trucks weighing as much as 100,000 pounds on the roads in six states. 

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