My youngest daughter turns 15 next month. There is currently nothing more important in my house than her copy of the Alabama Drivers License Manual.
She's a bright kid who's heard for years my lectures about safe driving and the bottom end of my vocabulary directed at many of my fellow motorists.
I don't have a lot of concern about her becoming a good and safe driver, but as much as you can get out of the prolific use of four-letter words, the best advice I could offer her as she prepares for the written test was, "When in doubt, choose the safest possible thing." That was the good advice I was given nearly 10 years ago when I got my CDL.
She's not my first driver. My oldest daughter is almost 21, but as a parent you never get comfortable with your kids driving on their own because so many needless and stupid things can happen to them while they're out there.
On May 6, at approximately 11:51 a.m., a loaded semi struck four vehicles from behind that were stopped for a red light in the southbound lane of Highway 43 at the intersection of South Industrial Park Drive in Thomasville, Alabama. "Struck" doesn't accurately describe what happened there. The rig obliterated those cars at-speed, killing two people instantly and injuring four more. There's no sign that the semi driver ever checked up.
Before getting into transportation, I did a tour of duty with newspapers. I have covered more crash fatalities than I can count – and two plane crashes. The dashcam footage from this wreck is as bad as anything I have ever seen.
Sheldon Day, a fireman of 40-plus years and the mayor of Thomasville, called the wreck "one of the worst accidents we have ever worked in the City of Thomasville during my career."
I live about 50 miles north of where this happened. There aren't a lot of "big towns" on Highway 43 south of Tuscaloosa. It's pretty much Demopolis (where I live) and Thomasville before you get to the gulf.
I've stopped at this same traffic light dozens of times. There are three secondary schools and a junior college just barely north of the crash site.
The Clarke County Sheriffs Office tells me the driver appeared to be answering a phone call at the time of the collision. That must have been one hell of a call because that stretch of Highway 43 is wide open. You can see that light long before you get to it. It's not going to surprise anyone that's paying attention.
The driver of the truck and another man off duty inside the cab were hauling for a company based out of Illinois, 4 US Transportation Company, and were in the U.S. on work visas. First responders called an FBI field office in South Alabama because neither man spoke English, and no one in Thomasville spoke Russian.
This tragedy will likely serve as support for enforcing the requirement that commercial drivers speak English – an executive order that also calls for a review of non-domiciled CDLs that are often issued to foreign citizens.
Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) this month – five days before this crash – added non-compliance with English proficiency to its North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria, effective June 25. By adding English language proficiency to the out-of-service criteria, a commercial motor vehicle inspector may place a driver out of service if they cannot demonstrate proficiency in reading and speaking English.
The investigation will never uncover the role a lack of English-speaking proficiency contributed to the crash in Thomasville, but CVSA doesn't leave a lot of grey area: six weeks from now (and seven weeks post-crash) the driver of that semi would have been parked had he been pulled for inspection.
A lot of safest possible things weren't chosen that Tuesday.
Use of a handheld is against every trucking safety best-practice under the sun as far as I know. It's an FMCSA violation, and it's against the law in Alabama. The driver is now facing two counts of vehicular manslaughter and additional charges could be added, I'm told.
