A fiery truck crash on Sept. 21 left a person dead and shut down I-81 in New York near Binghamton for almost eight hours, according to the New York State Police. 

The tractor trailer wreck happened at 9 am south of the Broad Ave. exit on I-81. Police believe that the wreck was a chain reaction crash: One big rig slammed into the rear of another, and then was hit by a third tractor trailer. It is not clear at this time which truck driver died in the wreck.

Two of the tractor trailers burst into flames and it took local firefighters two hours to get the blaze under control. Police continue to investigate the incident.

Our View

Most of us know how dangerous distracted driving can be. All it takes is to look away from the road for a second at highway speed for a deadly accident to happen. Now imagine a massive tractor trailer traveling at 60 MPH and the driver looks away from the road, and stopped traffic appears ahead….

As tractor trailer crash attorneys that handle serious truck accidents with personal injury and wrongful death cases, we know that far too many truck drivers allow themselves to be distracted while driving:

• Talking and texting on cell phone
• Talking on CB radio
• Reading on the Internet on a cell phone
• Reading a GPS navigation map
• Falling asleep

Our personal injury lawyers have settled truck accident cases for millions of dollars where distracted truck driving was a factor in the crash. We wish that truck drivers would spend every second of their time behind the wheel focused on their driving and many deadly and serious personal injury truck wrecks would be avoided.