Chicago, IL — April 4, 2025, one person was killed and another was injured in a truck accident at about 11:35 p.m. on northbound Interstate 94/Dan Ryan Expressway.
Authorities said a Nissan sedan was stalled in traffic near 59th Street when it was rear-ended by a semi-truck.
The Nissan driver died after being transported to a local hospital, while a passenger was hospitalized with unspecified injuries, according to authorities. Their names have not been made public at this time.
No other injuries were reported, but the crash did shut down all northbound lanes of the highway for more than four hours.
Authorities have not released any additional information about the crash. The accident is still being investigated.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
When a semi-truck rear-ends a stalled vehicle on a major expressway like I-94, the first legal question that comes to mind is whether the truck driver had enough time, and enough space, to avoid the collision. That’s especially important when the crash happens late at night, as this one did.
Rear-end collisions involving commercial trucks are rarely just about bad luck. They often come down to a failure to react appropriately to changing traffic conditions. Professional drivers are trained to maintain safe following distances, remain alert and anticipate problems on the road ahead. If they don’t. and someone ends up dead, the law is going to ask why.
Now, if the Nissan was disabled or stalled in a live traffic lane near 59th Street, that certainly complicates things. But that doesn’t automatically relieve the truck driver of responsibility. Trucks have headlights, long sight distances, and in many cases, onboard safety systems designed to alert the driver when a crash is imminent. If the truck still struck a stopped vehicle with enough force to cause a fatality, we have to ask: was the driver distracted? Fatigued? Traveling too fast for conditions?
To answer those questions, investigators should be looking closely at the truck’s engine control module. That will show whether the driver braked in time, how fast the truck was going and whether there was any last-second attempt to avoid the crash. Cell phone records and in-cab camera footage, if available, could also reveal whether the driver was paying attention.
That said, we can’t ignore the condition of the Nissan either. If it was disabled in the middle of the expressway with no lights or hazard signals, visibility may have been limited. That’s especially true around 11:30 p.m., when darkness and reduced traffic can create a false sense of security for all drivers on the road.
Still, commercial truck drivers are held to a higher standard precisely because of the damage a truck can do in a crash like this. One moment of inattention behind the wheel can result in devastating consequences. That’s why these cases deserve a full investigation: not just of what happened in the seconds before the crash, but of what steps were or weren’t taken to prevent it in the first place.
Because when someone dies in a stalled car on a busy highway, it’s not enough to say a crash happened. The real question is whether it had to.
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