Social Circle, GA — March 25, 2025, Brian Hix was killed in a truck accident at about 6:40 a.m. on State Route 11 bypass/Social Circle Parkway.

Authorities said a Dodge Ram was heading north near Laurel Street when it crashed head-on with a southbound semi-truck.

Dodge driver Brian Hix, 46, of Covington was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash, according to authorities. The truck driver was not injured.

Authorities have not released any additional information about the Walton County crash at this time. The accident is still under investigation.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

When a pickup truck crashes head-on with a semi, the obvious reaction is to assume the smaller vehicle must have crossed the center line and caused the wreck. But in my experience, it's not enough to assume anything, especially when one person lost their life. The real question is why these two vehicles collided in the first place. That’s what any serious investigation needs to answer.

Right now, we don’t know which vehicle left its lane. But even if we assume the Dodge crossed over, the next step isn’t to point fingers: it’s to ask why. Did the driver swerve to avoid something in the road? Could there have been a mechanical failure, like a blown tire or locked brakes? These things don’t leave behind obvious clues, and they certainly aren’t captured in the basic crash scene photos most people see.

If the truck crossed over into the Dodge’s lane, that opens up a whole different set of questions. Was the driver fatigued or distracted? Was he speeding or improperly trained? These are all things I've seen come into play in similar cases, and none of them are going to be found just by walking around the crash site. They require pulling the truck's ECM data, checking for dashcam footage and reviewing the driver’s hours of service logs.

No matter who left their lane, we also need to ask whether this crash could’ve been avoided. Could either driver have had time to react? Were road conditions a factor: low light, rain, or a curve that reduced visibility? In a case I handled not too long ago, a fatal crash turned out to have been caused in part by a bend in the road that gave drivers almost no warning when something went wrong ahead. That detail never made it into the police report, but it made all the difference in court.

What I’m getting at is this: head-on crashes between commercial trucks and smaller vehicles are almost never as simple as they look. If we stop the investigation at “Vehicle A hit Vehicle B,” we’re not doing our job. We have to ask what led up to that moment, and whether anything could have been done to stop it. That’s where the real answers — and accountability — come from.