MOsanthrope

Posted by Chris on January 26, 2006 at 12:54 pm.

I understand it’s important that Wal-Mart keeps getting its shipments of knockoff shower curtain rings on time, but this stuff has to stop:

LAKE BUTLER, Florida (CNN) — News of a crash in which seven children perished so upset their grandfather that he had a massive heart attack and died, the children’s adoptive mother said.

“I lost my daddy tonight,” Barbara Mann said Wednesday. “My dad died of a massive heart attack tonight over all this. He lost all seven of his grandkids … I can’t deal with this.”

Alvin Wilkerson, 32, has been identified as the driver of the tractor-trailer which plowed into the children’s car near Gainesville, Florida, Wednesday. The impact caused the car to slam into the rear of a school bus that had stopped to let children off.

The car burst into flames, killing all the children inside, Lt. Mike Burroughs of the Florida Highway Patrol said.

Six people have died in a crash in Interstate 57 in Southern Illinois. Three of those killed were children.

“This was easily the most tragic, the worst crash I have ever seen,” said Trooper Scott Rice with Illinois State Police.

Police say a tractor-trailer hit a guard rail, then crossed the median into oncoming traffic. That semi then hit another semi, sending the second semi into a creek. The first semi then hit a third semi, then crashed into a pickup truck.

A picture-perfect summer day turned into a nightmare Thursday on Interstate 44 after a dump truck slammed into the back of a minivan, killing five family members on their way to Six Flags St. Louis. Killed were two young brothers, their mother and her teenage siblings.

The truck carrying a full load of rocks was traveling west on the highway when it rear-ended the minivan, which plowed into four others cars as it careened off the highway. Onlookers, some of whom had been hoping for a carefree July day at the amusement park, watched as the minivan and truck were engulfed in fire.

Just google “family dies in truck collision.” You’ll get the point.

Attention tractor-trailer drivers: I’ve got my kids in here. You’re sitting in a 60 foot long rolling sledgehammer weighing 80,000 pounds. If you hit the breaks now, you’ll stop by Tuesday. Please hang up the cell phone, put down the cheeseburger, stop fiddling with the Boxcar Willie CD and slow the fuck down.

New rule: If a semi-truck driver is convicted of speeding, he spends a month in jail and loses his CDL for a year. If he’s convicted again, he spends a year in jail pondering his career options in light of the permanent revocation of his CDL.

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UPDATE:

LAKE BUTLER, Fla. - A truck driver who plowed into a car at a school bus stop last week, killing seven children, had been awake for 34 hours, except for a short nap, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.

Alvin Wilkerson, 31, was driving a load of bottled water from High Springs to Jacksonville, a distance of 85 miles, when he crashed into the other vehicle.

Additional commentary is unnecessary.

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Filed under: U.S., Health