Posted on 03/24/2022 8:40:50 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The six high school students were packed into a small, 2015 Chevy Spark with just four seats - and only the two teenaged girls riding in the front seat were wearing seatbelts, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Wednesday.
The six girls were all students of Tishomingo Public School, according to the district's superintendent. The driver was 16 years old, three of the other girls were 15 and the other two passengers were both 17.
The two vehicles collided around 12.19pm on Tuesday at the intersection of U.S. 377 and Oklahoma 22 in Tishomingo, a rural city of about 3,000 located about 115 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.
Troopers said the girls' vehicle was traveling eastbound on Oklahoma 22 and stopped at a stop sign at the intersection of U.S. 377 just before 12:30 p.m.
OHP Trooper Shelby Humphrey said Tuesday night that the girls attempted to turn at the intersection, which maps show is at the end of a 90-degree curve of U.S. 377 from east to south.
The girls' car was struck by the semi which was approaching from the east on U.S. 377, KXII-TV reported.
The force of the crash moved the car about approximately 300 feet from the intersection, KXII-TV reported, leaving it in a mangled mess with doors and ripped off.
According to the crash report released by OHP on Wednesday morning, the circumstances of the wreck remain under investigation.
Four of the girls, including the driver, were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, according to the OHP report. The other two girls died after being transported to the hospital.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Bless your heart!
The stop sign was apparently there last December
My county is installing a roundabout around the corner from where I live.
The primary road is east-west with a 45mph speed limit. The two crossroads have stop signs, and there is a slight offset.
Most people blow through the intersection at 55 to 60. To reduce the number of accidents the county dropped the speed limit to 35. People were still blowing through. The county then spends about $10k to make the intersection a 4 way stop. This reduced accidents to zero.
That wasn’t good enough for the idiot “Mr Smart Growth” county engineer who decided we needed an overly complex roundabout that’s costing us over $2.5 MILLION dollars.
None of that matters in the context of the problem you describe.
What is the posted speed limit there? The lane markings for the passing zones must be based on the posted speed limit, not “what everybody does.” It sounds like either the speed limit is not appropriate for the area, or they have to figure out a way to get motorists to drive at or near the posted speed limit.
I am totally familiar with a situation on one of the most dangerous sections of roadway in the U.S. for pedestrians. The engineers who designed the traffic signal system probably should have lost their professional licenses because they designed the signal system for an operating speed of 45 mph even though the posted speed limit was only 25 or 30 mph.
I suspect a lot of Americans don’t like roundabouts simply because they aren’t familiar with them. I have two of them within a few miles of my home, and drive through a third one at least once every week or two. They are fine once they become commonplace enough for people to encounter them frequently.
It’s almost intuitive that a roundabout would be more efficient than a stop-controlled intersection. At a stop sign, every motorist must stop even if there isn’t another human being within a hundred miles in a car or on foot. At a roundabout, an approaching vehicle must slow down but doesn’t have to stop unless he is approaching a yield sign and another vehicle has the right of way.
We’ve been losing car loads of high school kid’s for decades. We all probably have memories of fellow classmates that died in an accident during our high school years. For me it was four of our smartest and brightest Seniors (Natl Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, high level classes, athletes) on a road trip to the beach over Spring Break. The small school I attended was almost shut down over grief.
When traffic volumes are high, a partial cloverleaf interchange with two traffic signals on the minor crossroad will operate more efficiently than a full cloverleaf with no traffic signals that is designed to accommodate “free flowing” traffic.
# I’ll not post the pictures of that Spark after the accident, but they’re out there if anyone wishes to see them. Really all that is left is four wheels and a frame.
I notice they make specific mention in the article about who was, and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. it really doesn’t look to me like a strip of fabric would have helped any of them at all.
“The roof and dash were removed by firefighters recovering the bodies, looks like.
Heartbreaking.”
_____________________
And the doors
the trucker did nothing wrong.
he isn’t liable for anything, the girl driver on the otherhand...
Yes, dreadful indeed.
Prayers sent for the girls and all their loved ones... :-(
There are three adjacent towns of around 80,000 +/- each. Surrounding area is mostly agricultural.
I remember being one of around 7 or 8 teens in a VW Bug around 1971. They were able to fit in more because it had a sunroof, and one teen stood with his head sticking through the roof while another sat up there with their legs dangling into the car.
I don't recall now whether the seat on the sun roof came with a seatbelt? :-)
Speaking of seatbelts: People think that walking through graveyards at night is the ultimate spooky experience. But what I found to be an even spookier experience was walking through junkyards near twilight in the mid-70's looking for parts for my '65 van.
In that era, there were still plenty of cars from the 50's and early 60's to be found in junkyards, ie before seatbelts started to become popular (and later required by law).
And a large number of wrecks with major front end damage had circular, spider-web-like cracks to the windshield just above the steering wheel, and often a second one on the passenger side.
It was pretty obvious what had made those cracks from the inside of the car. As a recently minted driver, those always spooked me out.
Another positive is, roundabouts will also save the lives of countless motorcyclist due to the fact they won’t be getting broadsided by vehicles at intersections, doing 40+ mph who fail to notice the light is red or just blow through stop signs.
And this goes for cars/trucks as well. Intersections are death traps.
I think results here in Indiana showed there were more fender-benders but much less serious crashes.
No they're not.
Roundabouts will all but eliminate these horrific intersection collisions.
Don’t bet on that.
Damn near died the same way when I was 15 and driving home from Church with 3 others in a Volkswagen Beetle.
It was a car and she managed to just hit me with the side of her car. We all could have died that day.
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