Could it have been prevented? Can it happen again?

By Joe Kelly  

The tanker truck that crashed last November on Route 44 in Norfolk didn’t just disgorge thousands of gallons of gasoline into the center of town, it also left behind lingering questions about the circumstances surrounding the accident and worries that it could happen again. For example:

The truck flipped over on a quiet weekend morning on a fairly straight roadway. Why?

The truck was brand-new and equipped with safety technologies. Why didn’t they help? 

The tank containing the gas was 30 years old. Was its age a factor in the release of its full 8,200-gallon load?

Was the driver speeding? Distracted? Adequately trained?

What’s the track record of the transport company?

How vulnerable is Norfolk or any other town to this happening again?

To get answers, Norfolk Now reviewed police and incident reports, interviewed first responders and experts, read studies on tanker truck safety and obtained information through online searches. Neither the driver nor the transport company would answer questions. Future legal actions could uncover more details: residents near the crash site have retained attorneys, as has the town. The Connecticut State Attorney General’s Office is investigating. 

Here’s what we know, what we don’t know and what we might like to know:

Transporting Gasoline

Every day, tanker trucks are involved in hundreds of accidents across the country—including four to five rollovers—causing injuries, fatalities and untold property and environmental damage. The core problem is that tanker trucks are inherently top heavy. The slightest change in direction or speed will send the tank’s contents sloshing, making the truck highly prone to flipping, which is essentially what happened in Norfolk.

The Accident

The morning of Nov. 5, the truck that crashed on Route 44 was transporting gasoline from a terminal on the New Haven waterfront to the Shell station in Canaan. Approaching Norfolk town center, the truck passed a sign warning of the impending 8 percent downhill grade. Drifting to the right on the straight stretch, the truck first struck a utility pole near Beacon Lane and then—as the driver tried to steer it back onto the road—caught its wheels on a fire hydrant next to the pole, tearing apart several tires and flipping onto its right side. As it slid down Route 44, its aluminum tanks ripped or burst open, and all 8,200 gallons leaked out.

Statistically, according to a 2017 study of tanker truck crashes by the Volpe Center (a research arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation), most tanker truck rollovers follow this exact pattern. Rollover risk is now greatest on straight, undivided roadways like Route 44 where drivers, often traveling at excessive speed, allow the truck to drift off the roadway, try to overcompensate and cause the truck to flip. The unique, contributing factor in the Norfolk accident was the presence of the fire hydrant. Perhaps the crash could have been avoided, or made less severe, if the tires of the truck had not caught on the hydrant.

The Driver

Drivers must be at least 21 years old to obtain a commercial driver’s license (CDL). The driver in the Norfolk crash, Lamont Barnham of Bridgeport, was 27, giving him at most six years of truck-driving experience. The CDL exam contains written and driving tests plus a 10-question test for drivers transporting hazardous materials. It could not be determined whether or when Barnham obtained this additional qualification. Training is up to the transport company. The industry as a whole is desperate for drivers. 

The Truck 

The truck hauling the tanker was a brand- new 2023 LT model manufactured by International Trucks. Was the driver familiar with the truck? Had he driven it before? 

The truck comes standard with a range of safety technologies, including lane departure warning. Was this feature activated? 

The Tank 

The tank containing the gas was decidedly not new: it was made in 1992 by Fruehauf Corporation, which closed in bankruptcy in 1997. A 2020 survey by the National Tank Truck Carriers Association gives the average age of a typical highway tank trailer as 12.5 years. This tank was 30 years old.

Are more up-to-date tanks better? Leading manufacturers such as Heil and Polar seem to think so—their websites promote newer models as offering the latest protection against rollovers and leakage. 

The Transporter

The gas transporter was identified as Soundview Transportation LLC of Guilford, Conn., the commercial trucking arm of East River Energy, with thousands of customers in 13 states, including many area municipalities such as Norfolk. With just 26 trucks, Soundview is on the small side. The Volpe report notes that smaller carriers (under 150 trucks) are less likely to invest in driver training or safety technologies. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rates carriers on a percentile scale of zero to 100—the closer to zero the better. Data published as of April 25 on the website CarrierSource.io ranks Soundview in the 39th percentile for vehicle maintenance, the 30th percentile for driver fitness and the 28th percentile for unsafe driving. It’s had five accidents in the last two years and carries up to $5 million in insurance.

Speed

The state police did not charge the driver with speeding, but was he still going too fast? According to the report to the US DOT, the truck was traveling at 45 mph, five miles over the speed limit for that section of Route 44. Training materials for tanker trucks recommend that drivers navigating any curve or grade should reduce their speed to ten miles below the speed limit, in this case, 30 mph. A petition circulating in town is asking that the speed limit on that section of Route 44 be lowered to 25 mph.

Distracted Driving?

No further information was available about the actual state of the driver at the time of the accident, although he was issued a warning for failure to maintain lane. Was he tired? Was he distracted by a mobile device? The discovery that most tanker truck crashes occur on straight roads led the authors of the Volpe report to suggest that distracted driving is a common cause of these accidents. 

Could this happen again in Norfolk?

The Norfolk accident follows the pattern now identified as most common for most tanker crashes—with the added factor that the wheels of the truck caught on a fire hydrant. The Volpe report identified lane awareness technology as the most promising option for reducing the number of accidents; it obviously, however, did not prevent this one. Other options for reducing tanker truck crashes include:

Technologies such as driver monitoring systems specifically designed to detect distracted driving; 

More training on the risks of distracted driving;

Government and industry actions—new laws, regulations, insurance incentives, tax credits or rebates—to encourage the above;

Lowering the speed limit in that area of Route 44; and 

Implementing other traffic control devices such as additional signage, a blinker or a traffic light.

No solution is perfect. As long as our cars depend on internal combustion engines, we will depend on tanker trucks making their way through Norfolk and towns just like it, becoming involved in accidents that leave people dead and injured and cause considerable property and environmental damage.