St. Joseph County, IN — July 17, 2024, Tyler Lee Smith was killed due to an 18-wheeler accident at around 6:30 p.m. along State Road 2.
Authorities said that the incident happened in the Portage Township area west of South Bend at the intersection of State Road 2 and Chapel Lane.
According to officials, 29-year-old Tyler Lee Smith was on a motorcycle going along State Road 2. It appears an 18-wheeler with an Amazon trailer attempted a U-turn, and the motorcycle crashed into the tractor-trailer. As a result, Tyler Smith was killed. Right now, there are no additional details confirmed about the accident.
Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman
While I can’t offer any more information about what happened here, many of the hundreds of commercial vehicle accident cases I’ve handled involved truck drivers making u-turns or other risky maneuvers. I’ve known companies to outright fire drivers for even attempting to make a u-turn because they know that, even when legal, it’s not worth the risk. It makes me wonder why this truck driver decided to make the turn and whether or not there were issues surrounding their employment that made a deadly crash like this inevitable.
Here’s why I say that. There are a lot of trucking companies out there who incentivize or coerce their drivers into making reckless decisions for the sake of speed. For example, I had a case where a company would reward drivers who pushed their limits, cut corners, skipped rest breaks, sped, and avoided routine maintenance because it meant they were completing more jobs. The drivers who took the time to be responsible were passed over for new jobs in favor of the more reckless drivers. This predictably led to a horrible accident. While the trucking company was all too happy to cut their driver loose and move on, our investigations into their business practices showed a clear pattern of negligence, and they were held accountable for their own mistakes just as the driver was held accountable for theirs.
Again, to be clear, investigators haven’t specified the exact cause for the crash nor who they believe to be responsible. But when I see an accident happen as an 18-wheeler is engaging in behavior that I’ve seen cause many avoidable accidents, it only raises red flags that need to be addressed. The question is if authorities are considering both evidence at the scene of the crash as well as possible actions that could have prevented all of this from happening.
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