Mercer County, WV — May 31, 2025, two people were killed and another person was injured in a truck accident at about 2 a.m. on southbound Interstate 77.

Authorities said a semi-truck crashed into a car that had been parked near mile marker 5 on the right side of the highway.

Two people inside the car were killed in the crash, while a third was seriously injured, according to authorities. Their names have not been made public at this time.

The truck driver suffered minor injuries in the crash, authorities said.

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

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

When people hear that a semi-truck hit a parked car on the shoulder of the highway, especially one that resulted in two deaths and a serious injury, the first instinct is to assume the truck driver did something wrong. That may ultimately be true, but at this point, we simply don’t have enough information to know for sure.

The first and most obvious question is: Why did the truck leave its lane and strike a car on the shoulder? Depending on whether the car was fully off the roadway or partially in the lane of travel, the legal implications could change significantly. But either way, a basic principle of commercial driving is that truck drivers are expected to maintain control of their vehicle and stay within marked lanes unless emergency circumstances require otherwise. So if the car was safely off the road and the truck still hit it, something clearly went very wrong.

What could explain that? Was the truck driver distracted or fatigued? Was he speeding? Was there an equipment failure? These aren’t idle questions; they’re the kinds of issues that are often uncovered through a proper investigation, which should include:

• ECM data (the truck’s “black box”), which tells us how fast the truck was going, whether the brakes were applied and what the driver was doing in the moments leading up to the crash.
• In-cab cameras, if present, which can show where the driver’s eyes and hands were, and whether anything unusual happened inside the cab.
• Cell phone records, to determine if the driver was texting, talking or otherwise distracted.
• Driver logs and dispatch records, to check for signs of fatigue, excessive hours or tight delivery windows that may have pressured the driver to keep going when he shouldn't have.

It’s also worth looking at the vehicle that was parked. Why was it there? Was it broken down or had it pulled over for some other reason? Did it have hazard lights on? Was it positioned entirely off the roadway, or did part of it stick out into the right-hand lane? These are all unanswered questions at this point.

In my experience, one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming a crash like this has a simple cause. But commercial truck crashes rarely boil down to one bad decision. More often than not, they’re the end result of multiple failures; at the driver level, the company level and sometimes even with third-party contractors or shippers. That’s why the investigation can’t stop at the scene. It has to look behind the scenes, too.

Key Takeaways:

• The key question is why the truck veered onto the shoulder and hit a parked car.
• Evidence like black box data, in-cab footage and cell phone records can reveal what the truck driver was doing.
• It’s not clear whether the parked car was entirely off the road or partially in a lane, which matters legally.
• A full investigation should examine not just the crash, but also the trucker’s history and company practices.
• Until all the facts come in, any assumptions about fault are premature.