Highway Tragedy

About fifteen miles north of Klamath Falls the Oregon State patrol told drivers heading south that the road was closed a few miles ahead. We joined a long line of trucks and vehicles stopped due to something that had taken place a few miles ahead. As it turned out there had been a tragic accident between a long-haul truck pulling a semi loaded with steel and an oncoming vehicle. Information we were able to obtain over the CB radio only gave us a small idea of what had happened. During the three hours we waited the only thing we could learn was that a southbound vehicle had veered into a northbound semi-truck getting the truck head-on.

The next day, on our way back through Klamath Falls we learned that two young men had died in the collision and that the truck driver had suffered only minor injuries.

As we drove by the accident the night before we saw that the truck tractor was upside down halfway between the road and a railroad track on a steep incline. The flatbed was still upright but also sliding down the incline.

The vehicle, an SUV, was rolled into a ball of steel it was probably a little more than half the length of its original length. The young man in the SUV must have died immediately. Here is a newspaper article about the tragedy.

US 97 is cut into a hillside where the accident took place. The shoulders are very narrow and the road is bounded on both sides by substantial steel guard rails. The driver of the truck really had no place to go to get out of the way of the SUV that had come into his lane. Going toward the outside shoulder he was able to keep the contact from being truly head-on and the SUV struck over towards the driver's side of the truck.

The incident was quite sobering. Apparently, according to the newspaper article the driver of the SUV had been stopped for speeding by the Oregon State patrol some time before the accident.