Didrick Lee Dickerson, Jose Escobedo Injured in Truck Accident in Dawson County, TX
Dawson County, TX — October 12, 2023, Didrick Dickerson and Jose Escobedo were injured following a commercial truck accident at 6:04 a.m. on Highway 137.
Authorities said in their initial statements that the accident happened in the area of the Highway 137 and County Road 10 intersection.
According to officials, 47-year-old Didrick Dickerson was in a tractor-trailer which authorities claim was parked improperly in lanes of travel. 33-year-old Jose Escobedo was in a commercial truck going southbound, and authorities claim he admitted to being fatigued. Escobedo's truck did not slow down in time, hitting the side of the parked tractor-trailer. That pushed the truck into Dickerson, who was standing outside of the semi-trailer at the time.
Both drivers had injuries, with Dickerson's injuries being described as incapacitating. Right now, no further details can be confirmed.
I get questions about crashes like this one all the time where authorities paint a picture that seems to suggest both people involved may have done something wrong. I certainly couldn't say if the claims are true here, but the question people ask is, "Who does the law put at fault?" The simple answer is no one—at least not in the way one may think.
There's no magic equation for whose actions are more dangerous than the others. It's ultimately up to a jury to hear the arguments from both sides, weigh the context, and assign a percentage of blame to the parties involved. It could be they find all parties equally to blame, that one was more to blame than the other, or that something unusual came to light which shows neither driver is really at fault.
How a jury might react to a crash like this would depend on a better understanding of what exactly happened leading up to the collision and how it all could have been avoided. That's not generally something the public gets to see this early in the investigations.
