A man from Gorham, New Hampshire died on Jan. 7 after he was hit by a tractor trailer on I-95 in Maine, according to the Maine State Police. 

The police stated that at 5:45 PM, a 27 year old man’s car skidded into the median and hit trees off of the I-95 northbound lane. A tow truck stopped to help the man, who was standing in the median next to the passing lane. He then was hit at high speed by a tractor trailer.

The injured man was taken to a local hospital, but he died from his injuries. The accident investigation is continuing.

Our View

We want to caution all tractor trailer drivers to use great care when driving past disabled vehicles on the interstate. As tractor trailer wrongful death attorneys in Virginia, we are very familiar with the Virginia CDL manual. It states that it is the truck driver’s responsibility to look far ahead on the road – at least 10 seconds ahead of where you are to make sure there are no dangers or obstacles ahead. If the tractor trailer had simply moved over or slowed down, this terrible accident could have been avoided.

Our personal injury attorneys specializing in serious truck accident injuries and wrongful death have seen too many of these types of sideswipe crashes lately; we recently handled a wrongful death case where a truck driver stopped on the shoulder to check his rig, and he was hit by a passing tractor trailer and died.

This was a complex case; we hired a trucking liability and safety expert to carefully review the Virginia State police evidence. He also traveled to the accident scene in Emporia, Virginia to review all of the evidence. He then provided his conclusions to our personal injury lawyers. With his work, we were able to show that the sideswiping truck driver caused the unnecessary death of our client. That case settled for $2.25 million.