Hilton Head Island, SC — September 25, 2025, one person was killed due to a pedestrian versus truck accident at approximately 2:45 p.m. off of Main Street.

According to authorities, the accident took place in a parking lot in the vicinity of the Main Street and Whooping Crane Parkway intersection.

Details surrounding the accident remain scarce. Officials indicate that, for as yet unknown reasons, a pedestrian who had been walking in the store parking lot was struck by an 18-wheeler. The pedestrian reportedly sustained fatal injuries due to the collision and was declared deceased at the scene. Additional information pertaining to this incident—including the identity of the victim—is not available at this point in time. The investigation is currently ongoing.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

When someone is killed by an 18-wheeler in a store parking lot, the public is often left wondering how such a thing could even happen. These are low-speed environments with clear lines of sight—places where people expect to be safe walking from their car to the store. So when a truck hits someone on foot, the most urgent question becomes: what went wrong in the driver’s awareness and control of the vehicle?

Unlike high-speed roadways, parking lots offer little excuse for a commercial driver failing to see a pedestrian. These are tight spaces, often shared with shoppers, carts, parked vehicles, and children. That’s exactly why professional drivers are trained to exercise maximum caution in these areas—slowing to a crawl, checking blind spots, and using mirrors or even a spotter when navigating.

The fact that a collision still occurred suggests something disrupted that basic duty of care. Was the driver distracted? Did they make a wide turn with limited visibility? Was the trailer blocking the view in one direction? Or was the driver unfamiliar with the layout and trying to maneuver a rig that shouldn’t have been in that area to begin with? These aren’t abstract questions—they’re issues of preventable risk, and they go directly to both the driver’s conduct and the company’s judgment in sending a truck into a pedestrian-heavy space.

In many of the cases I’ve handled, the root cause wasn’t just a momentary lapse, but a pattern of lax oversight—companies sending trucks into unsuitable delivery zones without clear safety procedures or adequate driver preparation. If a driver wasn’t briefed on the drop-off conditions or given proper equipment (like backup cameras or proximity sensors), then it’s not just a driving error—it’s a failure of planning.

No one walks through a store parking lot expecting to encounter the kind of danger posed by an 18-wheeler. And when someone does lose their life in a setting like this, it’s almost always because someone with more responsibility wasn’t paying attention until it was too late.

Key Takeaways

• Low-speed environments like parking lots leave little margin for error and require heightened caution from truck drivers.
• Investigators should determine whether the truck had appropriate visibility, equipment, and routing for that location.
• Driver distraction, poor maneuvering, or a lack of site-specific preparation may have contributed to the crash.
• The trucking company’s decisions about routing, training, and delivery protocols may play a major role in liability.
• Fatal pedestrian collisions in parking lots are rarely just accidents—they’re signs of failures in planning and oversight.