Flipped semi snarls Summit traffic
A 18-wheel semi-truck flipped onto its side on Tuesday morning (May 15) in the southbound lanes of Summit Drive, near the bottom of the connector.
The truck took the corner of Victoria Street West and Summit Drive, tipping onto the side of the road and landing on a concrete barrier in front of the stop sign and lamppost at Guerin Road.
The driver of the Dolphin Delivery truck, Michael Bell, said as he went around the corner he noticed his trailer start to tip. When he realized he couldn't bring it back, he decided to aim for the ditch to try to keep his rig from landing on the road.
"The trailer tires were off the ground as I was coming around that corner and they stayed off the ground for, I'd say, two-and-a-half seconds," Bell said. "And, then I made the decision, 'It's going to go over anyways, so I'll put it [into] the ditch' and that's where I put it."
Bell said speed wasn't a factor as he came around the corner because he was traveling uphill in his transport truck as it tipped over slowly.
He said the RCMP suggested his load might have shifted to one side, which caused the truck to tip.
Bell was hauling 96 bales of paper. He had come from the Domtar pulp mill on nearby Mission Flats Road and was heading to Burnaby. He was unharmed in the accident.
As long as I didn't tie up the road very long and no one was injured, that's the main thing," Bell said.
"Hopefully I'll have my job tomorrow."
Cyclist Cec Tarasoff noted he bikes to his job at Thompson Rivers University every day.
"It could have easily been me in that spot where the truck tipped over," Tarasoff said.
Cpl. Jason Reader, a forensic collision reconstructionist with the RCMP, was at the scene to assess the cause of the accident, but said he couldn't make any final conclusions yet as most of the evidence he needed to examine was sitting under the trailer.
"Obviously, it's a rollover crash," Reader said. "There's a number of reasons a vehicle is going to roll over — speed, the way the vehicle is being driven and, in some cases, load."
Mike's Auto Towing sent two trucks to try to lift the trailer out of the ditch. The first attempt failed due to the weight. A second attempt was set to go after the trailer was unloaded.
No fuel was spilled in the mishap and southbound traffic on Summit Drive was blocked, while northbound traffic flow remained slow.
Kamloops Transit operations manager Bill Davey said southbound buses were being re-routed through downtown until the accident scene was cleared.
"The initial hoopla caused a lot of disruption," Davey said. "Any time something like this happens. our buses get pretty disrupted."
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