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Dash cameras are most often used by law enforcement agencies here in Texas and elsewhere in the country to document traffic stops and/or pursuits and create a record for anything it might see. On occasion, they record events that the driver never intended to capture, such as collisions. For instance, on a recent Friday morning, a dash camera captured footage of a gravel truck accident in which several people were injured.
The footage shows that the traffic signal was red and several cars were at a stop. It then shows a gravel truck speeding past the car in which the camera was operating through the right turn lane. However, the truck did not even appear to attempt a right turn, but instead went straight and rammed into several cars that were already in the intersection.
The gravel truck only came to rest when it went over an embankment on the other side of the busy intersection in Austin. Four people suffered injuries that were reported as not being life threatening. They were transported to area hospitals, and their current conditions are not known.
It took nearly eight hours to clear the scene. Reports indicate that the U.S. Department of Transportation has records of inspection violations and one crash within the last year-and-a-half against Franco’s Trucking, the company that owns the gravel truck. There was no indication whether the inspection violations had anything to do with the crash.
That would most likely be at least one line of inquiry in both the official investigation and any that might be done in advance of the filing of a personal injury claim from one or more of the injured victims. If negligence on the part of the driver and/or the company for which that person worked is documented, a Texas court might consider an award of damages consistent with those seen in other truck accident cases. Any restitution received could help defray the financial losses the victims incurred.
Source: king5.com, “WATCH: Gravel truck plows through busy intersection“, Feb. 26, 2016