Update (April 22, 2025): Authorities said the Kia driver has been cited for speeding and failing to heed warning signs or traffic control devices.
Milam County, TX — March 31, 2025, Clint McCaffety, Meghan, McCaffety and their 16-year-old son were killed and another person was injured in a truck accident at about 4:40 p.m. on State Highway 36.
Authorities said a Ford sedan and a Kia SUV were stopped in a construction zone near the Burleson County line when a semi-truck crashed into them. The impact knocked the Kia into a ditch.
Ford driver Clint McCaffety, 43, wife Meghan McCaffety, 39, and their son, a junior at Rogers Independent School District, were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, according to authorities.
The Kia driver, a 45-year-old woman from Fort Bend, was hospitalized with unspecified injuries, authorities said.
Authorities have not released any additional information about the Milam County crash at this time. The accident is still under investigation.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
When I hear about a semi-truck plowing into stopped vehicles in a construction zone, killing an entire family, the question I always come back to is this: What was the truck driver doing in the moments before the crash, and why didn’t they stop? That’s not a rhetorical question. In my experience, it’s the foundation of any serious investigation into a wreck like this.
Crashes in construction zones are a known hazard. These are areas where traffic slows down, sometimes suddenly, and drivers, especially professional ones, are expected to be on high alert. That’s not just a best practice; it’s a legal duty. Commercial drivers are trained to anticipate slowed or stopped traffic in work zones, and when they don’t, the consequences are often deadly.
In this case, two vehicles were stopped in traffic near the Burleson County line. A semi-truck failed to stop and hit them hard enough to knock one into a ditch and destroy the other, killing the family inside. When a fully loaded 18-wheeler strikes a stopped line of traffic with that kind of force, it almost always means the driver was distracted, fatigued or simply not paying attention.
The truck’s engine control module will tell us exactly what the truck was doing in the moments before impact: how fast it was going, whether the brakes were applied and how long before the crash the driver tried to slow down, if at all. That information is essential, not just for determining fault, but for understanding whether this was a case of delayed reaction or no reaction at all.
It’s also worth examining the role of the trucking company. Was the driver running up against tight delivery deadlines? Was fatigue a factor? Had the company pushed its drivers to stay on the road beyond what’s safe? These are questions that don’t get answered by a crash scene alone, but they’re critical to understanding why a preventable crash ended three lives in an instant.
Construction zones come with added responsibility. They require signage, clear markings and coordination between contractors and traffic control. But none of that works if a commercial truck barrels into stopped traffic like it isn’t there. When that happens, it usually means someone wasn’t doing their job, either behind the wheel or higher up the chain of command.
There’s no fixing what happened on that highway. But the very least that can be done now is to investigate this crash fully — beyond the police report, beyond what’s visible at the scene — so the families affected know exactly who’s responsible and why this never should have happened.
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