Bakersfield, CA — September 20, 2024, two people were injured following a semi-truck accident at around 5:38 a.m. along Highway 99.

Investigators said that the accident took place in the area of California Avenue on southbound lanes of the highway.

It appears two people were in a vehicle going along southbound Highway 99. While doing so, an 18-wheeler somehow went off the side of the road, hit a tree, then veered back onto the roadway. The truck hit the car, then overturned. As a result, the two people in the car had reportedly minor injuries. No other injuries were reported.

At this time, the cause of the accident remains unclear. It could be that this was something unavoidable, like a tire blowout or a medical emergency. But even in the more likely event the truck driver made a mistake, it's important to know why that mistake happened.

For example, I handled a truck wreck case a while back involving a driver who crashed after being behind the wheel for over 20 hours straight. It was clear the driver screwed up, but we kept digging. It turned out he was trying to meet a completely unreasonable deadline set by his employer. This company would routinely set ludicrous schedules for drivers, encouraging them to cut corners and drive recklessly to finish jobs. Drivers who preferred to be safe either had to find somewhere safer to work, miss out on jobs in favor of the more reckless drivers, or fall in line and start breaking rules.

This sort of behavior is much more common than folks realize. I've handled hundreds of commercial vehicle accident cases, and many of them involved mistakes that an employer made long before the drivers got behind the wheel. Again, maybe nothing like that happened here, but if it's not something that's on the authorities' radar, they could be missing something important.