Copyright New York Post
A 23-year-old New York trucker was killed after he was ejected from the cab of his “speeding” semi-truck as it careened over the edge of a mountain pass in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains on Monday morning. The unidentified driver’s hulking semi-truck splintered after it slammed down on the edge of Wolf Creek Pass, a high-altitude route on the Continental Divide. The fatal accident happened around 8:30 a.m., according to the Colorado State Patrol. The driver was reportedly hauling canned beverages in his 2020 Freightliner when he lost control and plowed through the left-hand guardrail. The trailer struck a barrier wall on the right side and split open, spilling its contents across the road before the entire tractor-trailer eventually sailed over the edge, investigators said. From there, the semi-truck soared down the steep cliffside, and the driver was thrown out of the cab. There was such a “large debris scene” trailing from the road down the mountainside that investigators struggled to locate the driver, but he was eventually found dead nearby, the Denver Post reported. Investigators elaborated and said that the driver failed to get onto a runaway truck ramp roughly a mile and a half up from US Highway 160, where he wound up crashing. Witnesses also reported seeing smoke coming from the truck’s brakes as it hurtled down the highway at an “excessive speed.” An investigation into the crash is still ongoing. The Wolf Creek Pass is notorious for its “dangerous curves” and steep 7% downhill grade on the west side. All commercial trucks are required to travel at 25 mph when cruising down the mountain pass, which stretches just eight miles from the summit to the base, according to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Between 2015 and 2019, 47 semi-truck drivers crashed on the west side of the mountain pass. Of those, three were killed, according to the Colorado DOT. A majority of the crashes “occur at the switchback curve near the Wolf Creek scenic outlook area,” which is also on the west side of the pass, the agency added.
