The passenger side of her SUV was completely smashed by the shipping container just before 11am Thursday near Highway 59 and Highway 288. The woman was sent to the hospital, but doesn’t appear to be seriously hurt.

The giant container on the back of a flatbed truck struck the overpass above, sending it flying off the truck onto the SUV below. The whole right side of the SUV was smashed in.

Somehow, the woman who was driving the mangled car, identified by family as Zoma Ramirez, escaped with her life.

“I think she’s lucky,” said Robert Weistloch, the woman’s son-in-law. “Luckily it fell on the passenger’s side.”

The container, according to its owner, General Marine Leasing, was a portable galley, used for cooking offshore. It was being transported from Louisiana to Brownsville.

The company transporting that container, Dynasty Trucking, refused to comment about the accident. The owners of the container say this is the second time the company has damaged their vessels attempting to travel cross country.

According to General Marine, trucking companies must submit for a permit before hitting the roads, reporting their cargo heights to the Texas Department of Transportation. TxDOT then provides an approved route based on those height restrictions.

It’s unclear if those procedures were followed in this case.

Houston police say the driver of the 18-wheeler will receive numerous tickets. TxDOT says it appears this truck was off-route. They say they don’t typically issue permits for oversized loads inside the 610 Loop.

Family members say Ramirez often traveled the route along Highway 59 several times per week and often alone. Her relatives say she was undergoing a CT scan after the accident to see if she had any internal injuries.

This is the second time in two weeks that a driver escaped serious injury after her vehicle was crushed. The collision between two Houston fire trucks sent one of them rolling onto a car. The driver in that car was able to get out of the truck on her own, but says she still has lower body pain. In all 11 people were injured. Leigh Boone, who was hit by one of the trucks while riding her bike, is the only one left in the hospital.

Source: abclocal.go.com

One person is dead after he was struck by a pickup truck while crossing Highway 69 near Nederland.

The accident happened just before 1 p.m. Wednesday on Highway 69 north of Spurlock Road.

Sergeant Chuck Havard with the Texas Department of Public Safety tells KFDM News Richard Mouton, 55, from Port Arthur, was crossing the highway and was struck by the driver of a Dodge Ram pickup truck heading north.

Mouton was flown by Southeast Texas Air Rescue helicopter to Christus Hospital St. Elizabeth where he died at about 2:30 p.m.

Sgt. Havard say the driver of the Dodge Ram pickup wasn’t hurt but another pickup driver who was able to avoid the pedestrian received non life-threatening injuries and was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Southlake, Texas police reopened eastbound Texas 114 after an 18-wheeler crashed on the highway.

The accident was reported shortly before 1:30 p.m. Monday on the highway between White Chapel Boulevard and Carroll Avenue.

Details of the accident were not available, but the 18-wheeler had been laying on its side, police said.

Because of that, police had to close two eastbound lanes for almost two hours before emergency crews managed to move the rig off the highway.

But police said that the Carroll Avenue off-ramp on the eastbound lanes will be closed for several hours as crews work to tow the 18-wheeler away.

Interstate 35E near State School Road in Denton reopened this afternoon after a tanker truck overturned with a load of phosphoric acid, officials said.

The road was reopened shortly after 1 p.m., more than eight hours after a pickup lost control and struck the tanker on the southbound lanes of I-35E, Denton officials said.

The tanker, which carried a chemical that is used to remove rust from metal and can be caustic to skin, did not rupture and came to rest on its side on a concrete median.

“We’ve had everyone involved checked out, and everyone is OK,” Denton police spokesman Ryan Grelle said. “There were no leaks, so we don’t have a hazardous materials situation.”

All lanes of the highway near the accident scene were shut down this morning so crews could offload the phosphoric acid into another tanker. An entrance to the highway was shut down at Loop 288 southbound and at Corinth Parkway northbound.

A 64-year-old man died Wednesday night at the scene of a crash on a Wichita Falls road.

Officers with the Wichita Falls Police Department went to the 1000 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday to investigate a report of an accident, according to a news release from the Police Department.

Investigators learned a 1999 Lincoln Continental had been traveling north on MLK Boulevard when it left the roadway, and struck a tree in the median.

The driver, 64-year-old Billy James Green, died at the scene, police said.

The Police Department’s Crash Unit was investigating the incident.

Four of five teenagers crammed into the cab of a pickup truck died after the 16-year-old driver lost control of the vehicle on a freeway and slammed into a concrete wall early Friday, according to authorities.

The only survivor was the driver, a male, who suffered broken bones, Houston police said. Three of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and the fourth died later at an area hospital, police said in a statement.

The identities of the victims were being withheld pending verification from the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office, police said.

The 1999 Ford F150 was heading westbound on U.S. 290 in northwest Houston when it spun out of control at 3:25 a.m., police said. The driver reportedly was attempting to enter U.S. 290 from Loop 610 when he lost control.

There were no signs of intoxication, police said.

Source: foxnews.com

Joseph Pineiro, 51, of Bakersfield, Calif., suffered a fatal heart attack and overturned the 18-wheeler rig he was driving Saturday evening, according to a Sheriff’s Office news release.

Medical officials confirmed that the driver of the 2007 Volvo Tractor Trailer had a heart attack just before the accident about 6 p.m. on Interstate 10 West between Clint and Fabens, El Paso County sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Jesse Tovar said. The rig veered off the road to the right, traveled up a dirt embankment and then turned over onto the driver’s side.

“It was the heart attack that contributed to his death,” Tovar said. “He didn’t suffer any serious injuries in the wreck that would cost him his life.”

El Paso Lawyer

A 10-year-old girl in a Christmas parade died Saturday when she jumped out of a pickup truck driving among the floats and was run over by a trailer carrying other children, police said.

The girl had been jumping on and off during the parade route and was told to stop before falling and hitting her head, said Monica Smith, a Beaumont police dispatcher. The girl was then struck by the trailer behind her.

A number of parade watchers watched the accident unfold, Beaumont police officer Crystal Holmes told Beaumont television station KBMT.

Authorities said the girl was taken to a hospital with severe head injuries and pronounced dead.

Smith did not have any details about what group the girl was with in the parade.

Stephanie Molina, who attended the parade but didn’t see the accident, said the city had considered canceling the Christmas parade this year because of the destruction wrought to the area by Hurricane Ike. Molina works for the city’s convention and visitor’s bureau.

“We decided to do this for the community because we needed something positive,” she said.

Hundreds attended the parade in downtown Beaumont. The grand marshall was former Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett, a native of nearby Port Arthur who was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down while attempting to make a tackle in a game last season.

The Christmas parade accident was the second this week in Texas. Ten members of a Cub Scout troop in Overton were injured Monday when they were struck by a pickup truck. The 82-year-old driver was charged with reckless driving.

Accident Lawyer

Source Dallasnews.com

The four-lane highway overpass south of downtown Dallas that was damaged during a tanker truck crash earlier this week will be demolished next week and rebuilt by mid-December, authorities said today.

In the meantime, State Highway 310 will remain closed near U.S. Highway 175 until the bridge is finished.  U.S. Highway 175 is expected to reopen on Oct. 31.

Texas Department of Transportation engineers evaluated the bridge near a bend — dubbed “Deadman’s curve” because of its near 90-degree turn —  earlier this week and determined it needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

The bridge was damaged Sunday afternoon when a tanker truck hauling thousands of gallons of fuel slammed into a retaining wall on the bend of U.S. 175, causing a fire to burn for hours.

Robert Lee Pride, 27, the driver, told police his front right tire blew, causing him to lose control. The accident report also cited speed as another possible cause. Mr. Pride was able to escape the crash without any serious injuries.

Demolition is slated to begin on Wednesday. The bridge should be finished by Dec. 15.