
No one was hurt after a semi truck hauling hazardous materials was struck by a train on Friday evening – though there is some confusion as to how exactly the accident occurred.
The accident happened on July 20th at around 6:30 p.m. in Wyandotte, Michigan.
The unnamed truck driver initially told police the crossing arms were down but that he crossed the first set of tracks on Pennsylvania Road anyway, since he didn’t see a train coming. The driver says he then heard a train horn and came to a stop between the crossing arms of the first set of tracks and the crossing arms of the second, thinking his trailer had cleared the first set of tracks – but he was wrong.
The oncoming train then struck the trailer parked partially on the train tracks, seriously damaging the big rig and causing concerns about flammability, as the rig was hauling paints, lacquers, and resins at the time of the accident. A Hazmat team was called and determined that there was no threat, though fuel spilled from the rig in the wreck would have to be cleaned up.
No one was hurt in the incident, reported The News-Herald.
Once the driver’s company supervisor arrived, the truck driver retold his story to police – this time a little differently.
“I stopped at that stop sign for a long time before I started to cross the tracks,” he explained.
“Once I was over the tracks I saw the railroad gate on the far side go down, so I stopped because I heard the train’s horn blasts.”
The police officer then stopped the driver, reminding him that he had mentioned earlier that the arms had been down initially and that he had ignored them, but the driver stuck to his second version of the story.
“No, no… Nothing was flashing and the gates weren’t down until I was almost to the other side,” the truck driver said.
“I actually got out of my car and was waving my arms and yelling at him to get off the tracks, but he just sat there until he got hit,” a witness to the crash explained.
The incident was not cleared until around 3:40 a.m. on Saturday morning but the tracks and roadway have since been reopened.
Any information on citations issued to the truck driver, if any, has not been released.