(Newswire.net — September 26, 2018) –Hundreds of thousands of accidents already occur each year involving large trucks on American roadways, but alcohol can make a dangerous scenario even worse. Such was the case in a recent accident along Interstate 70 in Boone County, Missouri.
Police records revealed that Juan M. Gonzalez of Laredo, Texas was arrested on charges of aggravated DWI after a September 2 accident that lead to an overturned tractor trailer. And although statistics show that some 3800 fatality crashes and 104,000 injury crashes can occur each year involving large trucks, only the truck driver himself sustained minor injuries at the scene.
Gonzalez was transported by police from the Missouri State Highway Patrol to a nearby hospital shortly after the 9 p.m. crash before being booked into jail under DWI charges later that same evening. His charges were classified as “aggravated” because he has been found guilty of drunk driving in the past. The 44-year-old driver was behind the wheel of a 2017 Freightliner The crash shut down lanes in all directions on I-70 for several hours after the accident during the fire and police response and then truck recovery efforts.
Most accidents involving big rigs don’t have nearly as happy an ending as this incident that involved no other vehicles and caused only minor injuries to the party who caused the wreck. Throughout the country, accident investigators have their hands full following up on 475,000 accidents per year that involve tractor trailers and other large trucks. That’s nearly half a million collisions that can lead to enormous losses in life and health as well as property. It is not known how many of those crashes lead to the filing of charges by the police or how many are later litigated by attorneys who specialize in eighteen-wheeler accidents.
This area of I-70 running through Missouri saw several other tractor trailer involved accidents within the weeks prior to the Gonzalez rollover. On August 29, another truck jackknifed just a few mile markers away, causing no injuries but closing the highway. And on August 24, two injuries did occur when a Jeep Wrangler collided with a truck on nearby highway 63 in Boone County with the driver ejected from his vehicle. Three eighteen-wheeler-involved accidents in the span of a week in a rural Missouri County is illustrative of just how many accidents occur throughout the whole country each year and how important it is for non-truck drivers to constantly be aware of the vehicles surrounding them on the roadways.