We are again reminded of the precarious nature of life on the Connecticut Turnpike by yesterday morning’s fiery tractor-trailer crash near the Q-bridge in New Haven. This area has been a mess for a number of years, while the state Department of Transportation has worked to build a new bridge there, and to rearrange or expand the “merge” between interstates 95 and 91.
Details are scant as police and other state officials work to clean up the site, but the pictures are horrific and there is a report that at least one person has been killed. Journalists on the scene report that, though it is unknown what the tractor-trailer was hauling, it crashed and became an “inferno” as it appeared to head down an embankment on the ramp heading northbound in this area. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims. This incident reminds us of several of the cases we have recently handled, including a crash involving a number of college students who ran into a disabled trailer on I-95 in Bridgeport, just a few miles south of this morning’s incident. Because of the number of trucking-related cases that we handle at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, we are keenly aware that sharing the roadways with giant tractor-trailers is often a risky proposition with sometimes devastating consequences.