Almost two days after a motorist died after being hit by a wheel that broke free from a semitrailer, Columbus police say the victim’s family has not been notified and the truck driver not been charged.
When a large truck loses a wheel, and control, the result can be deadly, to the truck driver or other motorists.
But when the tire becomes a projectile, the result can be terrifying. Especially at highway speeds.
That’s what happened June 19 after the wheel on a westbound Freightliner semitrailer broke away and bounced into the eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 near the exit to Miller and Kelton avenues, east of Downtown.
The left rear trailer tire broke off just after 4 p.m., hitting a Ford Taurus, a GMC Terrain and a Hyundai Tucson, according to a Columbus police news release.
The driver of the Ford Taurus died at 4:20 p.m. near mile marker 102, about a mile east of the Interstate 71 interchange, police said. As of June 21, the victim’s family had not been notified, Columbus police said. The Franklin County Coroner’s office said it was working on the case but provide no details.
The drivers and sole occupants of the semitrailer, GMC and the Hyundai were not injured, police said. As of June 21, the truck driver had not been named or charged.
It’s not the first time a semitrailer wheel has killed someone in Columbus
It’s not the first time a wayward tire ended in tragedy on the same stretch of freeway, closing it in both directions under similar circumstances.
In 2000, a tractor-trailer lost two of its 18 wheels along I-70, just west of Interstate 270. One of the wheels bounced over a concrete median divider, into the path of an oncoming semi which crashed through the divider and struck head-on a van driven by Dennis E. Redlinger who was killed.
Louis R. Ray was charged with misdemeanor vehicular homicide and hit-skip for not securing his truck before departing. He pleaded no contest and was found guilty of two lesser counts, reckless driving and one count of an unsafe vehicle.
And on March 10, a Columbus driver was killed after a dump truck lost its tire and hit her car on I-270.
Reva Greer, 84, was was driving her Chevrolet Impala on I-270 West, just west of U.S. Route 62 in Jackson Township, when an eastbound dump truck lost its tire, lost control and crashed through a median cable barrier and into Greer’s car, according to a Franklin County Sheriff’s office report.
NTSB: 750 to 1,050 semitrailer wheel separations happen yearly
Federal law requires truck drivers to perform pre-trip and daily inspections of their trucks. Much like airline pilots who walk around an aircraft before departing, drivers are to check that wheels are secure, tires in good condition and engine and lights working, along with a secure payload.
While it’s common to see shredded rubber from blown tires on freeways, it’s rare for a complete wheel separation, typically caused by lose or broken lugs or wheel fasteners, with 750 to 1,050 crashes from truck-tire losses annually, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
An NTSB investigation in the 1990s followed a series of fatal wheel-separation crashes.
Growth and development reporter Dean Narciso can be reached at dnarciso@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Fatal I-70 crash spotlights danger of semitrailer wheel failures
Reporting by Dean Narciso, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Dean Narciso, Columbus Dispatch | USA TODAY Network
