Christena Monroe Killed in Truck Accident in Waco, TX
Waco, TX — November 5, 2023, Christena Monroe was killed as the result of a semi-truck accident at around midnight along Interstate 35.
According to officials, the accident took place near mile marker 345 out in McLennan County near Elm Mott.
Officials said that 46-year-old Christena Monroe was in a vehicle said to be going along northbound lanes of I-35. While traveling, reports at this time say that a semi-truck allegedly crashed into Monroe's vehicle while changing lanes. This led to Monroe's vehicle losing control and crashed with another commercial vehicle.
Due to the collision, Monroe apparently succumbed to her injuries following transport to a Waco hospital. Additional injuries weren't specified.
If all of these claims are true, my immediate question reading these reports is, "Why didn't the truck driver see the victim's vehicle before changing lanes?" Generally speaking, any reasonably prudent trucker is able to avoid crashes like this without any issues. Mistakes can happen, certainly, and there may have been circumstances the truck driver couldn't avoid which investigations will bring to light. But it always makes me wonder if the truck driver involved was an otherwise experienced driver making a mistake or a driver who wasn't even skilled enough to follow the most basic truck driving safety training.
I handled this truck wreck case not long ago, for example, involving a truck driver who caused a serious crash. It was enough to simply point out their mistake, but I wanted to make sure the whole story was clear. As it turned out, that one mistake was actually the result of numerous, glaring mistakes from that driver's employer.
Through company records, we discovered the at-fault truck driver barely had any training and was wholly unqualified to drive a commercial truck—a profession that requires skill and care to a higher degree than a lot of other jobs. The company was just so desperate to get trucks on the road that they hired the first person that walked through the door, trained him just barely enough to get the truck moving (skipping vital training like bad weather driving and night driving), then sent him on his way. It was all but inevitable that the woefully inexperienced driver would hurt themselves or someone else, and that's exactly what happened.
After serious truck wrecks like this, there are often seemingly obvious questions to ask. But the answers are where things become complex. There's a big difference between a driver having a momentary lapse in reason, a company creating conditions that risk serious wrecks like this, and highly unusual circumstances that even the truck driver couldn't foresee. It remains to be seen what possibly complex answers and wrongdoers might come to light as investigators look into this terrible event.
