A 28-year-old woman from Annandale, Virginia is currently in critical condition after a terrible accident involving a tractor-trailer. The accident took place outside of Hagerstown, MD and left U.S. 40 closed for nearly six hours while police investigated the accident scene.
Police in Maryland say that while the driver of the passenger vehicle remains in critical condition, the driver of the tractor-trailer, a 63-year-old from New Jersey, was uninjured in the crash.
Police say the accident happened last Monday just before 2 p.m. near the intersection of U.S. 40 and Maryland 144. Police say they have been able to determine that the semi was traveling west along U.S. 40 and tried to make a left turn onto Maryland 144 directly into the path of the oncoming car.
The force of the accident was so great that the front half off the passenger car was sheared completely off the rest of the vehicle and thrown in front of the truck. Police say they had to call a helicopter to rush the female driver of the vehicle to a nearby hospital for treatment. So far no word yet from local authorities about criminal charges.
The accident illustrates just how dangerous tractor-trailers can be when involved in accidents with passenger vehicles. Passenger vehicles typically weigh less than 4,000 pounds while semis can weigh close to 80,000 pounds, a huge mismatch that often turns deadly for the occupants of the passenger vehicles. In fact, numbers gathered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that the occupants of a passenger vehicle are 12 times more likely to die in an accident with a tractor-trailer than the occupants of the semi.
My firm has successfully handled multiple cases against truck drivers and trucking companies that caused severe injury and death to innocent motorists in Virginia. In one case, my firm was able to secure a $650,000 jury verdict for a client who was injured in a serious wreck involving a MACK truck.
If you’ve been injured in a Virginia tractor-trailer accident you likely are wondering what you should do to move the case forward and ensure you receive the financial compensation you deserve. If so, consider checking out my firm’s library of attorneys’ answers to frequently asked questions regarding Virginia (VA) truck accidents.
Here’s a Google Map showing the location of the terrible accident:
CA