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PHOENIX — Federal safety officials said Thursday they would investigate a crash in which authorities said a milk tanker traveling at high speed crashed into seven passenger cars on Phoenix Highway, killing four people and injuring at least nine.
The wreck occurred on Wednesday evening, the Arizona Department of Public Safety said in a statement, after the tanker “failed to slow due to heavy traffic.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said it will send nine investigators to conduct a safety investigation into the accident in cooperation with the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Board spokesman Chris O’Neill said among the issues NTSB investigators will consider is whether the accident could have been prevented if the tanker was fitted with electronic safety devices. “Automatic emergency braking is definitely something we want to take a look at,” he said.
The Phoenix Fire Department said in a statement that six of the nine injured in the accident were taken to hospitals in critical condition. The ages of the four men and two women ranged between 22 and 45 years. Details of the four dead were not immediately released.
After the initial collisions, the excavator’s trailer broke off and went over the center wall of the highway and ended up on its side in the lanes going in the opposite direction, the state’s Department of Public Safety said.
The administration said the authorities had ruled out the possibility that the truck driver had a disability. The truck driver has not been identified.
Currently, there are no federal requirements for semis to have forward collision warning or automatic emergency braking, although the systems are becoming common in smaller passenger cars.
The systems use cameras and sometimes radar to see things in front of the car, and either warn the driver, slow the car down, or even stop the car if it’s about to hit something.
O’Neill said investigators will determine whether the tanker had any advanced safety equipment and if so, how it performed in the accident. If he doesn’t have the systems, he said, they will determine if “collision avoidance technology will mitigate the risk or prevent it altogether.”
He said the NTSB has investigated several large truck collisions that have either stopped or slowed traffic. As early as 2015, the NTSB recommended that manufacturers immediately include electronic safety systems as standard equipment. At the time, the agency said the systems could prevent or mitigate more than 80% of rear-end collisions, which cause about 1,700 deaths and half a million injuries annually.
Twenty automakers representing 99% of new passenger car sales in the United States signed a voluntary agreement with the government in 2016 to make the feature standard on all light vehicles by September 1, 2022, and many companies are progressing toward that goal.
O’Neill said the team heading to the scene includes members with expertise in vehicle carriers, highway design, passenger protection, human performance, vehicle factors and technical collision reconstruction.
He said investigators will also try to determine if driver distraction played a role.
“Our investigators will look at the people involved in the accident, the vehicles involved in the accident, and the environment in which the accident occurred,” O’Neill said.
Investigators generally remain at the scene for five to 10 days, and publish an initial report 30 to 90 days after completing their fieldwork. Investigations usually take 12 to 24 months to complete.
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