BERKS COUNTY, NJ – According to Nbcnewyork.com, a couple from New Jersey was killed in a chain reaction collision that took place on Interstate 75 on Wednesday, November 14, 2018. The couple was driving to their wedding at the time of the fatal accident. The collision took place at about 2:30 p.m. The victims 35-year-old […]
BERKS COUNTY, NJ – According to Nbcnewyork.com, a couple from New Jersey was killed in a chain reaction collision that took place on Interstate 75 on Wednesday, November 14, 2018. The couple was driving to their wedding at the time of the fatal accident.
The collision took place at about 2:30 p.m. The victims 35-year-old Kathryn Schurtz, and Joseph Kearney were headed westbound in heavy traffic when a large truck failed to slow down to avoid striking the couple’s vehicle.
The truck hit the couple’s vehicle and smashed it into another semi-truck, which set off a chain reaction in which several other tractor trailers were hit.
The vehicle that the couple was driving in, and two tractor trailers all caught on fire. Both Schurtz and Kearney died in the crash, and three other people were injured.
The couple was driving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where their wedding was to take place.
Large trucks outweigh passenger vehicles by around 20 or even 30 times. Crashes between trucks and smaller vehicles often lead to the people in the smaller vehicles being injured or killed. While 66 percent of the victims in large truck crashes are people, who were riding in passenger vehicles, in looking only at crashes involving both large trucks and passenger vehicles, the victims in these fatal crashes are people in the passenger vehicles 97 percent of the time.
Trucks also take a long time to stop. Because of their weight and mass, it can take them between 20 and 40 times as far to come to a complete stop as it takes passenger vehicles. On wet or slick roads trucks can take even longer to stop.
