The Wayne County Sheriff’s Department announced that a 20-year-old Chesapeake woman, Joyce Jackson, was killed in a traffic accident when she was thrown from the bed of a pickup truck.
The fatal West Virginia pickup truck accident took place on West Virginia Route 152 on Monday when the young woman was riding in the bed of the truck with her parents, Russell and Linda, in the cab of the vehicle. The pair did not know that their child had fallen out of the vehicle and were stopped by by-standers who told them about the accident. Jackson was rushed to Cabell Huntington Hospital but was soon pronounced dead of an apparent traumatic brain injury.
In West Virginia, there are no laws against riding in the back of a pickup truck; however, that does not mean that doing so is safe. Pickup truck beds do not have seat belts and do not have the added protection of a steel shell as the cab of a truck does. Those riding in the bed of pickup trucks can easily be thrown out of the vehicle, ejected, or crushed during a rollover accident.
Have you or someone you love been injured or killed in a pickup truck bed accident? Speak to a West Virginia traffic accident injury attorney today.