North Chicago & St. Louis Injury Updates
The Fire Media Affairs Director says that a man was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer early Thursday morning, April 24, as he got out of another semi to take pictures of a previous accident. The collision occurred around 6:30 a.m. in the 1300 block of West Division Street. The Director says that prior to his death, the man had been involved in a minor fender-bender with a car driven by a woman in the Noble Square neighborhood of Chicago.
The man who was snapping the photographs of that accident was also a tractor-trailer driver. According to the Director that victim perished at the scene of the secondary accident although that detail has not yet been corroborated by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. The woman who was involved in the initial collision was uninjured, as was the driver of the truck which killed the victim. The Major Accident Investigations Unit is still investigating the crash at this time, although there has not yet been any mention of drugs or alcohol having played a role in this crash.
As this case demonstrates, there is a significant difference in weight between a pedestrian and a multi-ton tractor-trailer. That is why there are many state and federal regulations that govern the operation of semi-trucks on our streets. For example, some of those regulations place restrictions on the amount of training a driver has before they are authorized to get out on the road.
The family of the victim may want to know if the driver of the truck who killed their loved one had sufficient training to prepare him or her for the challenges of negotiating such a large and heavy vehicle around a crash site such as the location of the first accident. That family might require some assistance in getting the answers to those questions. They should consider hiring a legal professional with experience in trucking accidents to help them with their investigation. While no amount of money can return the victim of this accident to his family, they may be entitled to recover a portion of the wages he might have earned over the course of his lifetime if he had not been killed in this preventable accident.
Source: NBC Chicago Channel 5, “Man Struck, Killed by Truck While Taking Photos” No author given, Apr. 24, 2014