Child, Adult Injured in Truck Accident on I-65 in Jasper County, IN
Jasper County, IN -- March 13, 2023, a child and adult were injured after an accident where a truck crashed into traffic on I-65.
Authorities said that the incident happened at around 5:45 a.m. along southbound lanes of I-65 following a semi-trailer rollover that occurred earlier that morning near Fair Oaks, south of Roselawn.
It appears that traffic along I-65 backed up due to that rollover. Approaching that traffic, a Ford F-750 reportedly failed to slow down and crashed into the line of vehicles. One of the vehicles hit was a 2020 Subaru. Officials say the driver of that vehicle had serious injuries due to the collision. It appears a 4-year-old in another vehicle also had serious injuries due to the crash. Details regarding other injuries are unclear at this time.
The cause of the crash has yet to be confirmed, though it's understandable if a lot of people are ready to blame the truck driver. Frankly, driver negligence is the most likely explanation here. There was a whole line of vehicles that had no problems slowing down for traffic. So what was different for this truck driver?
Answering that question isn't always as simple as one would think. For one, this could be some highly unusual situation the truck driver couldn't actually avoid. Brake failure, medical conditions, tire defects—likely or not, an investigator overlooking those possibilities isn't doing their job properly, plain and simple. But even when something more common occurs, it's important to understand the context of those actions. They can sometimes show that a mistake was actually the symptom of a more serious issue.
Let me give an example of what I mean. A lot of rear-end collisions like this involve drivers looking at their cell phones. A while back, something like that happened to a family who then came to us for help getting information about what happened. As we dug into the details, we found the truck driver involved had been texting and driving. Open-and-shut, right?
Well, further digging showed he'd been texting his supervisor, essentially because he was required to do so. His boss would constantly hound drivers throughout the day and demanded they always respond immediately to calls and texts. Drivers who failed to live up to this ludicrous expectation risked getting fired, so it was just a matter of time before one of them, trying to appease their idiot boss, got themselves or someone else seriously hurt. Unsurprisingly, that's exactly what happened.
In a situation like that, a simple slap on the wrist for a driver on their phone wouldn't be enough. Failing to ensure that business corrected its behavior would inevitably lead to more people getting hurt. Every family I've ever seen in that kind of situation needed help, obviously, but what they really wanted was accountability. Solving those kinds of systemic issues means having the evidence necessary to see there are appropriate consequences.
So when I read about wrecks like this, my first thought isn't that some truck driver screwed up (likely as that may be). My first concern is whether or not authorities are going to dedicate the time, tools, and experience necessary to ensuring the victims and families involved are getting all the facts. Whatever those facts lead to, that path forward can't be built on mere assumptions.
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