The above looks due west/northwest on Glenrose Avenue in Nashville, Tenn., just up the road from the site of a tragedy a few nights back that, like so many, could have been avoided. I don’t know all the circumstances, but a fuel tanker driver heading east on Glenrose toward the Delta Express fueling station on the northeast corner at Glenrose and Thompson Lane apparently took a wrong turn, making a left onto “Old Glenrose.” What you see when you do that is very easily, and quickly, recognizable as a steep over-a-railroad up-and-down-type grade situation that a long combination vehicle will not be able to make.
All’s fine there — according to media reports, the driver very clearly made such a recognition and began to back his way out of the mistake. On his way back, if I’m reading the reports correct, one-half of his trailer’s tandems angled off into a ditch obscured by evening darkness or something else, and the entire unit turned over on its side. As it began to tip, the driver panicked and attempted to jump from the cab. The rig pinned him to the ground.
I stopped off at what would have been the driver’s next delivery point — the aforementioned filling station — and inquired after his condition. Media reports noted he’d suffered a couple of broken legs, and store employees also noted that was the case, in addition to other injuries, and that “it could have been a lot worse.” He was, last they’d heard, in stable condition but recovery would take a long time — the driver, they said, was 67 years old.
To the family and the driver: I sincerely hope for a full recovery.
I missed any mention of the incident on local news until a report aired on the website of news channel 4 here in Nashville, posted with the headline “Residents want truckers to stay out of the neighborhood.”
In that report, you’ll hear a lot of what you hear from such local reports — citizens “putting truckers on notice” about traveling through their neighborhoods and such. David Morales, president of the Woodbine Neighborhood Association, where the above accident took place, noted the disaster that could have been: “This would have been a serious disaster. If fuel had leaked, if there had been a fire there, they would have had to evacuate.”
