Big rigs, box trucks, commercial delivery vans and construction vehicles are all large vehicles with enough size and mass to do serious damage to another smaller passenger vehicle should a traffic accident occur. On Maryland’s busy interstates and surface streets, these huge motor vehicles must share the road with family cars, SUVs, mini vans and motorcycles, yet potential catastrophe is only a moment away for some motorists.
As Baltimore auto accident attorneys and Washington, D.C., personal injury lawyers, I and my legal staff are constantly amazed that more people aren’t seriously injured or killed by commercial vehicles, especially in light of the densely populated condition of our cities. So when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer or other large commercial truck is involved in a roadway collision in Rockville, Gaithersburg, Frederick or Bowie, MD, the carnage that results is not all that surprising.
Aside from the “normal” injuries that passenger car occupants can receive in a commercial truck crash, such as cuts, lacerations and heavy bruising, drivers and passengers alike can sustain serious and even life-threatening injuries. Compound fractures of the arms or legs can cause serious blood loss that if untreated can result in death. A person trapped in a severely damaged vehicle must be extricated as soon as possible and taken to a hospital for immediate medical treatment.
Other injuries pose longer term medical complications. Also the result of a car, truck or motorcycle wreck, spinal cord damage and closed-head trauma (also known as traumatic brain injury) can put a person in a wheelchair for the rest of their life, if they even survive those initial injuries.
Not long ago, a concrete mixing truck went out of control on Interstate 270 in Montgomery County, MD. According to news reports, the multiple-vehicle accident happened in Germantown just north of the exit for Father Hurley Boulevard. Police reports indicated that the crash, which took place about half past 2pm on a Monday afternoon, involved three vehicles including the cement truck.
Based on reports, the truck was moving south along a stretch of I-270 when for some reason the vehicle flipped onto its side striking a pickup truck carrying a road repair crew. Reports from the Maryland State Police said that more than one dozen firefighters and emergency responders soon arrived at the scene of the accident.
The road crew was apparently in the process of placing or picking up traffic cones in the area at the time of the collision. When their truck was hit by the cement mixer, two of the workers who were riding in the bed of the pickup were reportedly thrown to the ground.
Although information on the crash was sketchy, there apparently was another passenger car involved in the crash, as a young child was also reportedly injured during the incident, according to sources at Montgomery County Fire and Rescue.
The injuries were thought to have been severe enough to merit medevac transport, however all the victims were eventually taken to local hospitals in EMS vehicles. In all, three adults and a 10-year-old minor child were hurt in the collision. All of the southbound traffic lanes were blocked for several hours following the crash, but had reopened by late in the afternoon that day.
Overturned cement truck closes I-270 south, Gazette.net, June 8, 2011