LEAWOOD, Kan. – New video released Thursday captures the eight-mile trip a driver made under a tractor-trailer.
The video is from Wednesday morning. A driver slipped under a tractor-trailer, then was struck underneath for several miles along Interstate 435.
Getting someone out of a car stuck under the trailer of a tractor-trailer is not that unusual. Firefighters say it happens more than you think.
When rescue teams saw the Kia compact car stuck under the trailer of a large semi-trailer truck on Wednesday morning, they immediately knew it was no ordinary accident.
“It was a little hard to figure out what happened,” said Olathe Fire Department Battalion Chief Sean Brooks. “We knew something was wrong. But again, she had been through such a traumatic event up to that point, she wasn’t exactly able to tell us until we were able to get her out, what had happened.
The 28-year-old Kansas City woman told Brooks she crashed into the truck’s trailer and got stuck under it at I-435 and State Line Road, nearly 8 miles from where rescue teams were now using special equipment to cut the gate. to her car and get her out.
The radio transmission recorded by Broadcastify brought rescue teams with special extrication tools to the scene after other drivers called 911 to alert police that the car was being dragged onto the freeway just after 3:30 a.m. Wednesday .
Brooks says the firefighters’ only goal was to free a trapped woman, even though they didn’t quite understand how she got there.
“The amount of snow accumulated inside the vehicle where the windows had blown from its 8 mile road trip and the fact that it was as cold as it was, all of those things, we have could understand later,” he told me.
Brooks considers it remarkable that no one was seriously injured, particularly as the roofline of the car had partially collapsed and the vehicle could have freed itself from the trailer while being dragged at speed. highway.
Firefighters say they are not surprised the truck driver never acknowledged he had been involved in an accident, as the slippery conditions on the roadway that morning significantly reduced the amount of friction that the dragging a car would normally generate.
