Man injured by ice coming off semi trailer

An Aurora man was injured last week when a piece of ice came through his windshield as he drove on Butterfield Road.  The ice was knocked off the top of a semi-trailer ahead of him as the trailer passed beneath an overpass.  He suffered facial fractures and eye injuries as a result of being struck by the piece of ice.  The truck driver did not stop, and the best description that witnesses could offer regarding the truck was that the trailer was white.

In response to press inquiries, a spokesman for the trucking industry agreed that ice coming off trailers was a safety hazard, but stated that trucking companies could not be expected to remove ice from the top of trailers because there are no tools for doing so and it is too risky to trucking company employees to get up on top of the trailer to clear them.

At present, New Jersey is the only state that requires tops of trailers to be free of snow and ice.  There are no federal regulations which address the issue.

No one believes that it is acceptable for pieces of equipment such as wheels to come off tractor-trailers and injure the public, nor do people believe that it is acceptable for portions of the load to come off the trailer and injure a member of the motoring public, so why should it be acceptable for drivers to knock blocks of ice off the tops of their trailers onto trailing vehicles?  Drivers are required to know the clearance height of their vehicles, and if their trailers are higher than usual because of snow and ice piled on top, that is their business to know.

The real answer why the trucking industry is not doing anything about snow and ice on top of trailers is that there is no accountability.  The truck driver whose trailer dropped the block of ice on the man from Aurora kept driving, probably completely unaware of what happened.  My guess is that in most cases, the driver has no idea and leaves the scene.  The result: no claims for and no impetus for putting people ahead of profits.

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