Truck Crash Colorado - With Videos

Ha ha, so basically, both. I was just curious. Anyway, you can think what you want about how tough I am, but I can defend my points and I don't need to hide behind what Brett wrote.

Sorry for the digression everyone. Carry on.

Kurt G,

The reason why the police would be so confident in pursuing manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, is that the driver's liability only requires deviating from a "reasonable standard of care" and causing someone's death. See the link below.

While everything is speculative at this point as to what actually happened, there have been many comments on this thread about pre-trip, gearing, jake brake, etc. The driver's failure as to any of those would be a deviation from the reasonable standard of care. Mountain Girl stated:

I70 east or west bound, is a lot of work and I avoid it as often as possible

. An experienced driver's says that a reasonable standard of care is don't drive on this stretch of road. This is not the first time I have heard this about 1-70 West of Colorado. I'm not even in CDL school and have only be on this forum for a short while, but I've learned this. A driver with a CDL with proper trip planning should know this.

Colorado Criminally Manslaughter Law

Now I'm going to sound like G-Town. Every driver who kills another person in an accident should expect to face manslaughter charges. But a non-professional driver will only be held to the standard of care for a typical driver. As a CDL holder, you are held to a higher standard of care, because of your training and all the regulations you have to follow.

Another video showing the truck before the crash:

It appears that he was already somewhat out of control when he passed the runaway truck ramp.

Damn, that is how quickly your everyday driving routine can turn catastrophic if your not on top of your game.

Lots of smoke coming off the wheels as he screamed by. Looks like he cooked his brakes trying to get it under control.

I was at the Blue Beacon getting my trailer washed out in Commerce City about 15 miles away when this happened I was listening to it on the radio. You could see the smoke. Initially they said it was only a truck and four cars... those poor people never saw it coming.

Kurt G,

The reason why the police would be so confident in pursuing manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, is that the driver's liability only requires deviating from a "reasonable standard of care" and causing someone's death. See the link below.

While everything is speculative at this point as to what actually happened, there have been many comments on this thread about pre-trip, gearing, jake brake, etc. The driver's failure as to any of those would be a deviation from the reasonable standard of care. Mountain Girl stated:

I70 east or west bound, is a lot of work and I avoid it as often as possible

. An experienced driver's says that a reasonable standard of care is don't drive on this stretch of road. This is not the first time I have heard this about 1-70 West of Colorado. I'm not even in CDL school and have only be on this forum for a short while, but I've learned this. A driver with a CDL with proper trip planning should know this.

Colorado Criminally Manslaughter Law

Now I'm going to sound like G-Town. Every driver who kills another person in an accident should expect to face manslaughter charges. But a non-professional driver will only be held to the standard of care for a typical driver. As a CDL holder, you are held to a higher standard of care, because of your training and all the regulations you have to follow.

Thanks for researching and explaining. Very well done

I know this driver is not in an auto but I'm curious. Im not really familiar with automatics but don't they have some sort of Hill assist for both going up and down grades? Would I be correct in saying it would be harder to go flying down a Hill like this in an auto?

Bird, sometimes manual drivers will try to downshift going down a steep grade and because the truck picks up speed when the tranny is in neutral, it messes up the drivers synchronization and they can’t find a gear especially if they’re in a panic. Then all they can do is burn the brakes.

AMTs don’t have the same issue with a missed gear and failure to recover. At least that is how I understand it unless anybody knows different.

I've added the second video to the very first comment in this thread.

What's odd about the 2nd video is that the guy shooting it is behind the truck that crashed. The truck is swerving all over the place but his brakes aren't smoking and he's not going any faster than the traffic around him. If he had smoked his brakes to the point that he had no brakes the smoke would've been billowing off him like an old steam engine, but it wasn't. If he had no brakes you would expect him to be flying way, way faster than the traffic around him, but he was being filmed by another truck who was comfortably going the same speed as the swerving truck.

The whole thing just seems really odd.

It’s reported that the driver admitted to driving 85mph when his brakes failed.....