Some people just aren’t early risers. Our work might suffer a bit when our minds aren’t running at 100 percent. However, some of us drive tractor-trailers for a living, where mistakes are never small. A 62-year-old Virginian is facing reckless driving charges after plowing a raised trailer bed into a highway exit sign last Thursday morning on Interstate 64.
The crash ripped the trailer off of the cab at around 9:35 a.m., the Washington Post reports. The bed hit the sign dead center, folding it in half. The trailer was left perched up on its rear, held aloft by the mangled gantry. Thankfully, no one was injured by the crash. The trailer was pulled off the sign by 11:00 a.m., but the highway wasn’t reopened until 4:45 p.m. that afternoon, and WRIC reported that traffic was only allowed on a single lane. The Virginia State Police stated the crash is still under investigation.
This is nowhere close to the first instance of a raised bed slamming into an overhanging structure. Earlier this year, a dump truck driver drove a raised bed straight into an overpass in Ohio. Over 15,000 low-clearance bridges are stuck per year on average, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Each impact is definitely felt by the budget of every state DOT in the country.
