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Truck Driver Gets 7 Years for 7 Child Deaths

By Eddie Farah

Truck Driver Gets 7 Years for 7 Child Deaths

by Eddie Farah

This was one of the most horrible truck accidents this area can remember. On January 25^th, 2006, a tractor-trailer driver reportedly fell asleep behind the wheel and drove his trailer into a car full of Lake Butler children waiting in a car for a school bus.

All seven children died in an inferno. The children were all part of the same family.

The driver, Alvin Wilkerson, of Jacksonville, Florida, was facing seven counts of vehicular homicide and other charges. On Thursday afternoon, Wilkerson pleaded no contest to the seven courts, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Was seven years enough? Mary Murphy doesn't think so. She had two children in the bus that was hit by the car following the crash. They are still healing, she says.

"There's not any word that could ... the pain that my children have been in. They're only kids, and now they've got to live with this for the rest of their lives too," Murphy said. "Not enough. I believe there isn't enough time for what he did. But, we're not the only ones suffering. His family is too."

Wilkerson, 33, apologized to the family and asked them not to look at him as a heartless person.

After all, he was not drinking or taking drugs. Wilkerson had driven the tractor-trailer for 34 hours with only a short nap. That far exceeds federal standards for being behind the wheel.

Tired and inattentive drivers may be responsible for up to 75 percent of all accidents involving trucks, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. 5,000 people were killed in 2006 in crashes involving large trucks, while another 106,000 were hurt, according to federal statistics.

A couple of years ago, a coalition of consumer groups, headed by Public Citizen,filed a petition challenging the 2005 hours-of-service rules that allows truck drivers to stay behind the wheel for 11 hours a day, up to 88 hours in eight days.

The rules also fail to require electronic on-board recorders, which, following an accident, might be the only reliable way to determine just how many hours a tired trucker was behind the wheel.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Eddie Farah

Full post as published by Jacksonville Personal Injury Lawyer on June 14, 2008 (boomark / email).