Woman Dies and Two Children Injured After Crash With Semi Truck
A woman died and her two children were seriously injured after her car ran into the back of a tractor-trailer on State Road 207 in Hastings, St. Johns County, Florida, according to an article on News4Jax.com. The article indicates that the semi truck slowed and the woman’s vehicle drove into the rear of the semi truck causing the vehicle to be pinned under the trailer.
Ordinarily, fault for rear end accidents are attributed to the rear vehicle as they are in a better position to avoid the crash. There are exceptions to the general rule if a vehicle stops suddenly and for no reason or is stopped in the roadway without properly alerting other drivers. In the case of a semi truck, even where the accident is caused by the rear driver, there still may be some fault on the semi truck driver and the trucking company if the tractor-trailer does not have the proper markings and equipment. Semi trucks should have bright stickers or marking around the vehicle to alert other drivers of its presence. In the back of the trailer, they should also have bars or guards that prevent smaller passenger vehicles from going underneath the trailer in the case of a serious rear end accident like this one. In the past, rear end accidents involving passenger cars resulted in much more serious injuries than necessary because the car would go under the trailer. As a result, semi trucks are supposed to have bars on the back of their trailers to prevent cars from going under the trailer in cases of rear end accidents. Where semi trucks do not have this type of equipment on their trailer and a serious accident of this type occurs, it can be argued that the semi truck driver and the trucking company were negligent for not having the proper equipment on its vehicle that would have lessened the severity of the injuries in a rear end accident.
