Fatal Interstate 84 semi-truck crashes push safety to forefront

TWIN FALLS — When loaded trucks weighing 80,000 pounds crash on the interstate, it’s never good.

Six of these crashes have resulted in four deaths this month in south-central Idaho.

Talking about truck crashes doesn’t come easy for Brian Layton of Twin Falls. He’s seen both sides of the incidents, as a first responder and as a full-time trucker.

“The first thought is that it’s tragic,” Layton said, “and I hope nobody got seriously injured or they walked away clean.”

But walking away uninjured from a crash doesn’t always happen, and the Magic Valley has seen an extension of the “100 Deadliest Days,” a term referring to an increase in fatal motor vehicle crashes on America’s roadways from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

In the Twin Falls area, fatal crashes involving semitractor-trailers occurred on Sept. 1, Sept. 9, Sept. 15 and Sept. 23 on Interstate 84, while injury crashes occurred Sept. 13 and 14.

One occurred when a truck ran into the rear of another semi, and another trucker died when his semi veered into a guardrail, overturned, and came to rest in a canal west of Burley. The third was a head-on collision when a truck entered the wrong lane of traffic. The fourth and most recent fatality, on Saturday, involved a truck crashing through barricades in a construction zone and striking a worker doing maintenance on the interstate.

The percentage of truck-involved fatal crashes this month is running high, compared with a few years ago. Six of nine crashes in September involved large trucks.

In 2021, 12.5% of fatal crashes in Idaho involved a large truck, according to statistics compiled by lawyer John Fitch, who analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

That ranked Idaho ninth nationally.

Those numbers don’t surprise Layton, an instructor at Commercial Driver School in Twin Falls.

“A lot of it is somebody rushing,” he said. “Whether it be the truck driver rushing or the car driver, someone was in a hurry. That is what leads to a lot of accidents.”

Ken Wiesmore, commercial vehicle specialist for District 4 Idaho State Police, agrees with Layton but adds other factors.

“It’s a combination of distracted driving, aggressive driving, fatigue, and also equipment issues,” Wiesmore told the Times-News.

What caused some of the crashes this month isn’t specifically being released as the ISP continues its investigations, he said.

“We don’t want to pick on commercial drivers,” Nathan Jerke, spokesperson for the Idaho Transportation Department, said, “but with the size of their vehicles they need to exercise an extra share of caution.”

But don’t be so quick to point to truck drivers as the person responsible for the cause of all the crashes, he said. Motorists not paying attention to trucks’ special needs can also play a role.

“Unfortunately smaller vehicles might be causing some of those as they whip around in and out and around those trucks,” Jerke said, “so it goes both ways.”

And then there is the matter of construction zones, the sites of several of the crashes. The head-on crash at 2 a.m. was near the end of a construction zone at milepost 200 near a crossover, where traffic is directed over the interstate median. The truck crashed through a barricade and entered the wrong lane of traffic, Jerke said. The driver died while two people in the other semitractor-trailer were taken to the hospital.

Layton, from his own experience, said it’s likely that the truck driver got confused at the hundreds of orange cones laid out on the roadway, with disastrous results.

In Saturday’s incident involving the death of the construction worker, Jerke said it is possible that the westbound driver had difficulty seeing clearly because the sun was in his eyes.

Jerke said construction zones are laid out according to national and state standards, and involve factors such as signs, speed limits, and the number of orange cones needed per mile.

Speed limits are reduced at construction zones to a speed that most drivers believe is safe to travel, he said. If they are arbitrarily set too low, a condition called speed differential will result. Some drivers will enter construction zones too fast while some drivers will be observing the speed limit or even traveling a little under the limit.

“That creates safety issues on its own,” Jerke said.

Drivers, whether driving an automobile or a large truck, need to pay attention and not follow vehicles too closely, he said. If not, they might not see a traffic sign until it’s too late.

Layton said truck drivers are doing their part to keep roads safe.

“I’m not saying by any means that truck drivers are perfect,” Layton said, “but in general, truck drivers are more safe drivers on the road because of the consequences we have if we screw up.”

Layton said truck drivers have added incentive to drive safely. Their livelihoods depend on it.

“We understand that if something happens to our license, our job is gone too,” he said. “Just getting a DUI in my personal vehicle, that will affect my license and I can’t go to work anymore as a truck driver. I would need to find some other work until I can get my license back in good standing.”

Most motorists with a regular “Class D” driver’s license don’t hold those licenses in the same reverence as does a truck driver holding a commercial driver’s license, Layton said. Plus he said the holders of those licenses don’t have the experience on the road that truck drivers do.

Layton said it has been his experience as a first responder that most crashes involving large trucks are due to the carelessness of other road users. He tells of his experiences during winter when vehicles collided with the back of semis on icy roads.

Many of his students get wide-eyed, he said, when he reminds them of the responsibility they have when they get behind the wheel of a truck that outweighs other vehicles on the road many times over.

The sheer size and mass of the vehicles make it more likely that people could be injured or killed when crashes involve trucks, statistics show. And cleaning up the aftermath can take hours.

“It is the truck driver’s responsibility to be as safe as possible,” Layton said. “There is a reason why they need to have so much training to get behind the wheel in a vehicle like this.”

He acknowledged that there can be pressure placed on truck drivers to make it to their destinations on time, despite the road conditions, and federal regulations that limit the hours a truck driver can drive — usually 11 hours per day.

“I’ve heard about it and seen it myself, where some truck driver pushes the limits to get the job done,” he said. “Unfortunately, not all truck drivers choose the right path, in my opinion.”

Driving a truck isn’t easy.

“A driver has to have his head on straight — he has to have his mind on the task at hand,” Layton said.

Daytime and nighttime driving pose different sets of challenges. When Layton began driving full-time, he was driving at night.

“It can be solitary,” he said, with not as many cars on the road. “The hardest thing for me was staying awake. I was chugging coffee like it was going out of style.”

Once he got out of the military, Layton gravitated toward truck driving. After all, his grandfather was a truck driver and his father also did a short stint as a driver.

He was working full-time behind the wheel of a big rig before he and his wife, Ashley, began operating the truck-driving school in Twin Falls. His wife serves as vice president of the company, which also has schools in Washington.

Layton trains students of various ages how to safely navigate the big trucks down the highway — along with how to back up the vehicle, an important skill when drivers need to get the tail end of the trailer to a loading dock.

The first week is classroom learning meant for students to obtain the knowledge — including such things as how air brakes work and how to inspect vehicles — needed to pass a test and get a CDL permit from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The next three weeks involve field training. “We take them out on the road and the student sits behind the wheel, and the instructor is in the passenger seat,” Layton said. “The goal is to be able to get the students to be able to drive on their own.”

On a short ride with a Times-News reporter, Layton demonstrated the challenges a truck driver has.

One of the first personality traits that truck drivers need to have is patience, he said. Drivers aren’t in a small sports car, but in a lumbering 60-foot-vehicle that also takes a while to slow down once it does pick up speed.

At least once a vehicle darted in front of the semi, causing Layton to tap on the brakes. Another time there was a merge where two lanes converged into one. The best way to approach that, he said, is to see the situation far down the road and set yourself up to prepare to handle it. Sharp turns means having to go into the other lane of travel, all the while making sure other vehicles aren’t in the lane at that particular time.

A driver has many blind spots when driving a truck. Even looking over the top of his hood, the first piece of pavement Layton can see is about 10 feet in front of the truck.

His advice for other motorists is to not travel side-by-side with a semi: Either stay behind or get in front, but give a truck plenty of room before cutting in front of him. Because the trucks can’t stop quickly, they often try to leave six or seven seconds of space between them and the vehicle in front of them when traveling at high speeds.

While there are challenges, Layton said his graduated students — who range from 18 to 85 years old — enjoy the work. It can pay the bills and support a lifestyle after not putting in a huge investment of time or money training to be a truck driver.

He hopes his students drive safely. Recalling how he taught his son how to drive an automobile, he said, much of the same advice pertains to truck driving.

“Watch out for people and try to keep it as safe as possible,” Layton said.