Monroe County, NY — May 9, 2024, Vincent "Vinny" Giammarva was killed and Mark Vara was injured following an 18-wheeler accident at 12:30 p.m. on the NYS Thruway.

New York State Police officials responded to the crash southwest of Rochester along the eastbound lanes of I-90.

In initial statements, it appears that 62-year-old Vinny Giammarva and 58-year-old Mark Vera were in a NYS Thruway Authority work zone at the time of the accident. While in the area of the work zone, it appears a tractor-trailer somehow ran into the work zone, hitting both Giammarva and Vera. As a result, Giammarva was killed while Vera sustained reportedly critical injuries.

Commentary by Attorney Michael Grossman

Right now, the exact cause of the accident remains unclear. That said, I can't recall many situations I've come across in my career where a commercial driver crashed into a work zone in broad daylight (and I see no signs weather was bad at the time, either) without doing something wrong. Maybe this is the exception, but even if there is proof a mistake caused all of this, it's important to know why it happened.

Here's why I say this. Folks tend to see a driver do something wrong and assume all the blame lies with them. With commercial truck wrecks, though, a lot of mistakes are the result of both a driver and their employer's negligence.

For example, pressure to meet tight delivery deadlines is a common problem in the trucking industry. Drivers either incentivized to focus on speed over safety or otherwise punished when they fail to meet unreasonable deadlines can cause drivers to cut corners they ordinarily wouldn't if they worked for a safer, more reasonable employer. This can lead them to be fatigued, to skip vital maintenance, to speed, or to look at their phone on the road instead of waiting to pull over.

Ultimately, it's up to the evidence to say who and what caused all of this. The key is to ensure that the scope of the investigations is broad enough that no accomplices slip through the cracks. After all, the hundreds of families I've helped confront commercial trucking companies didn't just want a bad guy to blame. They wanted to see accountability for the harm caused to them. I'd be surprised if those involved here felt any differently.