Trucker avoids crash but risks firing.

I arrived at the scene of a jackknifed 18-wheeler midafternoon in the median of Highway 75 in Plano, Texas. I was the shift sergeant on duty in that sector for Plano Police Department and I had taken the call because my patrol officers were all unavailable at the moment.

The truck driver was uninjured, but despondent over his company policy of automatically firing any driver who wrecked one of their big rigs. He was on the verge of tears saying how he couldn’t afford to lose this job.

His story was simple. He was just coming into Plano from the north going the speed limit, which I believe was 65 MPH at the time. He said a vehicle entered the freeway in the acceleration lane and moved into his lane directly in front of him. He had noted that the driver was female.

Then suddenly, without warning and with nothing in front of her, she slammed on her brakes. Was it an intentional “brake check” just to screw with the trucker? I don’t know. She fled the scene after the accident and we never identified her.

The image that had burned into the truck driver’s mind was a little girl lying on the deck under the rear window, smiling and waving at him just before the woman braked. He didn’t know if the child had rolled off the deck onto the back seat of the car. All he knew was that he had to avoid smashing into the rear of that car.

He had jerked the steering wheel hard to the right. The truck swerved back and forth, jackknifed, and came to rest in the median between the north and southbound lanes. The cab sat at an angle sharper than 90 degrees to the trailer and would clearly require a wrecker to pull it out of the ditch. It would almost certainly require repairs before it could go back on the road.

Traffic was moderate and a couple of witnesses had stopped to wait for the Police. They confirmed the trucker’s story about the car brake-checking him, and the little girl in the back window. But nobody had gotten a license number as the vehicle sped off. Everybody gave me a consistent description of the vehicle, but it could have matched a thousand vehicles in Plano at the time. There was little hope of identifying the driver, and we never did.

I called for one of the large tow trucks that could handle a fully loaded 18-wheeler and departed the scene as soon as the highway was open again. Then I returned to the police station and went to the Chief’s office. I asked Chief James McCarley if he could write a letter to the trucking company congratulating them on one of their drivers who had avoided crashing into a car that almost certainly would have killed a little girl. He told me to write the letter for him and he would sign it. I did, then mailed the letter over the Chief’s signature. But we never heard back from the company.

I have often wondered if my effort had paid off and saved that truck driver’s job. He certainly did not deserve to get fired for his actions.