2 Injured in 18-wheeler Accident on US 97 in La Pine, OR

Deschutes County, OR — December 2, 2025, two people were injured following an 18-wheeler accident at around 3:30 p.m. on US Highway 97.

Oregon State Police says that the accident happened at the intersection of US 97 and 1st Street/Reed Road south of La Pine.

According to officials, a semi-truck was going along the highway where it reportedly rear-ended a Dodge pickup. This led to a chain reaction where the semi hit a Ford pickup. The Dodge pickup and an oncoming semi collided, as well.

Due to the accident, two people from the Dodge were seriously injured. Possible charges are pending further investigations.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

While it’s entirely possible this was due to something sudden and unavoidable, it’s not surprising to hear there may be charges filed here. There aren’t many reasons a semi-truck rear-ends another vehicle without the driver doing something wrong. That said, I hope authorites don’t just file charges and move on. Especially with commercial truck wrecks, it’s important to dig into why the crash happened.

I’ll give a perfect example of why that’s important. We had a case a while back involving a truck driver who crashed after being behind the wheel for over 20 hours straight. That’s pretty egregious, and the driver obviously was in the wrong. Authorities considered the matter closed, and I’ve seen a lot of inexperienced attorneys who would do the same. We kept digging. What we found was the truck driver’s employer pressured them into making that mistake.

The company routinely set ludicrous deadlines for drivers to meet. Those deadlines all but required drivers to violate hours of service limits, speed, make dangerous u-turns, skip maintenance and rest breaks, and otherwise break all kinds of rules to make time. Drivers who instead took the time to be safe missed the deadlines and risked their livelihoods. The drivers who cut corners to meet these unreasonable expectations were rewarded with more work.

I’ve handled hundreds of commercial vehicle accident cases, and situations like that are unfortunately common. If investigations into a crash are thorough enough, they can often root out the actions taken behind the scenes that paved the way for the accident to happen. That means accountability must also extend behind the scenes so that all wrongdoers face the appropriate consequences.

With this specific accident, maybe the accountability doesn’t extend beyond a single individual. But if it does, the victims and families involved in the wreck deserve to know those accomplices will also be held accountable.