Burleson County, TX — October 18, 2025, Emily Liu was injured in a truck accident at about 3:15 p.m. on State Highway 21 west of Bryan.

A preliminary accident report indicates that a 2006 Sterling truck collided with a 2017 Toyota Camry at the intersection with F.M. 50.

Toyota driver Emily Liu, 21, was seriously injured in the crash, according to the report.

The truck driver, who was not injured, was cited for failure to yield, the report states.

Authorities have not released any additional information about the Burleson County crash at this time.

Commentary

When a truck collides with a smaller vehicle at an intersection, people naturally want to know: Why wasn’t the larger vehicle able to stop or avoid the crash? In this case, reports say the truck driver was cited for failure to yield, but that doesn’t necessarily explain how the crash unfolded, or whether that citation alone gets to the root of what went wrong.

The phrase “failure to yield” often sounds straightforward, but it leaves out critical context. Was the truck turning left across traffic? Did the driver misjudge the speed of the oncoming car? Did he even see it? We don’t yet know whether the truck was stopped and then pulled out, or if it was already in motion and somehow miscalculated the timing. That difference matters; not just in assigning responsibility, but in understanding what led to a serious injury.

There’s also no information yet on what kind of technology the truck had on board. These days, many commercial trucks carry engine control modules (ECMs), dash cameras and even inward-facing cab cameras that could shed light on what the driver was doing in the moments leading up to the crash. Was he distracted? Was he on his phone? Did he brake too late or accelerate into the intersection? Those aren’t things we can guess at. They’re questions answered by evidence.

It’s also important to look beyond the crash scene. What were the trucking company’s policies around driver training, rest schedules and hiring procedures? In my experience, it’s not unusual to find that a driver who makes a critical mistake wasn’t properly screened or trained in the first place. I once handled a case where a company hired a driver who’d been fired multiple times before, and then gave her a 20-minute road test to see if she could handle day, night and bad-weather driving. That wasn’t a fair test. It was a rubber stamp. And it cost someone their life.

A citation is a starting point; not the end of the story. The real question is whether the driver’s failure to yield was just a momentary lapse or part of a bigger pattern of poor decisions, bad policies or preventable oversights.

Key Takeaways:

• A failure-to-yield citation tells us what rule was broken, but not why it happened.
• Key facts are still missing, like whether the truck was turning, stopped or already in motion.
• Black box data, dash cam footage and phone records can clarify the truck driver’s actions.
• Trucking company practices around hiring and training may also play a role in accountability.
• Thorough investigation is essential to identify not just a mistake, but the system that allowed it.