A TIMES INVESTIGATION - HAULING DANGER, COURTING DISASTER - Common trailers in untrained or careless hands can become unguided missiles, hurtling toward the defenseless. Rules are rarely enforced.
RICHLAND TOWNSHIP, PA. — Spencer morrison was a stickler for safety. The middle-school teacher had precious cargo to protect -- his 4-year-old triplets, Ethan, Garret and Alaina. Only the best minivan and top-of-the-line car seats would do.
None of that mattered when a trailer -- a 3-ton wood-chipper on wheels -- broke loose from a truck and careened into oncoming traffic like an unguided missile on April 13, 2006.
It smashed into the minivan and "just blew the vehicle apart," the local police chief, T. Robert Amann, recalled. Morrison, 37, and two of the triplets died instantly. Ethan suffered a fractured skull and other injuries but survived.
The truck driver, Bradley Demitras, hadn't checked to make sure the chipper was securely hitched to his vehicle. He also failed to connect the safety chains, which are supposed to keep a trailer attached if the hookup fails. Demitras pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and is serving nine to 18 months in jail.
Runaway trailers are a little-known but persistent cause of devastating crashes, deaths and injuries across the country.
The government does not keep nationwide statistics on accidents caused by trailer decouplings. But a Times review of news reports and court files identified about 540 such crashes since 2000. They resulted in at least 164 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
Because some accidents aren't reported by news media or captured in electronic archives, the numbers likely understate the frequency of such incidents.
Shortly before Demitras' sentencing this past May, a runaway trailer triggered a chain-reaction wreck on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland that killed three people and snarled traffic for nearly eight hours.
In August, a Montana man perished when a loose trailer struck his pickup head-on.
In September, a motorist died in Spring Hill, Fla., when a trailer broke free and hit her car.
Runaway-trailer crashes are notable for the cruel coincidences of place and time that put the victim in the path of a rolling projectile. Most of the victims are helpless motorists, but pedestrians have also been injured or killed -- including children waiting for a bus or walking home from school. Runaway trailers have even crashed into living rooms and bedrooms.
