MARCH 10, 2015
LAUREL, MARYLAND. (WJLA)
Investigators said a fuel tanker driver was trying to avoid
a collision in front of him caused by a car abruptly crossing two lanes when
his rig overturned Tuesday along southbound Interstate 95, about 5 miles north
of the Capital Beltway in Maryland.
As we first noted so in our web pages, this is one of the
typical causes of tanker truck rollovers or flips. The drivers must avoid sudden avoid evasive maneuvers
as they lead to accidents. Of course the
drivers are between a rock and a hard place: should they collide with the car ahead of them
that suddenly cut them off or should rollover and crash? One of the solutions of course is to travel
at a slower speed. It is better to
arrive later at your destination than to cause these accidents and delays that
will in fact make you be late, very late.
Maryland State Police troopers charged the driver of that
car, 23-year-old Christopher Rhodes of Laurel, with following too closely,
unsafe lane change, failure to control speed to avoid a collision, and reckless
driving contributing to a collision.
But Rhodes told ABC7 News that he was not the person who
really caused the accident. He said a white van hit him from behind as he tried
to merge from state Route 198 onto I-95 south. Rhodes said that led to the
chain reaction.
"A vehicle behind me hit me and forced me into the lane
that I was trying to merge into, which caused me to hit the vehicle that I hit,
and which caused everything else afterwards,” Rhodes said. So I wasn't abruptly
changing lanes, I got hit and pushed into the lane. But the person that hit me
kept going, and I never got their license plate.”
The bio-diesel fuel tanker overturned Tuesday morning south
of Route 198 near Laurel. NewsChopper 7 showed aerial views about 10:30 a.m. of
the tanker lying across four lanes and pushing into jersey barrier walls along
the median.
Prince George's County fire officials said two people,
including the tanker driver, were evaluated, but didn't need to be taken to a
hospital.
It took crews several hours to hoist the overturned tanker
upright and tow it away, before turning attention to the clean up of about 700
gallons of spilled fuel on the highway. Some lanes of southbound I-95 finally
reopened for the evening rush hour after traffic was snarled much of the day
and motorists were forced to divert off at Route 198.
The tanker involved in the accident was owned by
Baltimore-based Petro Express. A company representative told ABC7 News that the
driver, identified by police as 32-year-old William Gorman of Westminster, had
over a decade of experience.
A federal database showed no prior accidents with serious injuries
or fatalities involving Petro Express.