In 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data found that in Wyoming, the number of fatalities from large truck crashes rose from 3.3 per 100,000 people in 2021 to 5.1 in 2022. This concentration of deaths resulted from 34 large trucks getting into accidents, which is 21% of total vehicles in fatal crashes from that year, which caused 30 deaths.
Abigail Godines, a Wyoming resident, is more intimately familiar with these statistics than others. Five of the 30 deaths in Wyoming in 2022 were part of her family.
“I lost my parents, brother, sister-in-law, and infant niece when they were struck by a speeding semi that failed to stop traveling an unconscionable 76 miles an hour,” Godines said. “Speeding semis are a menace and a deadly threat to everyone on the highway.”
Emiliano and Christina Godines had finished celebrating a birthday in Denver, Colorado, on June 13, 2022. They were returning home to Gilette, Wyoming, via Interstate 25 with their 20-year-old son, Aaron Godines, his 20-year-old wife, Halie Everts, and their daughter, 3-month-old Tessleigh. But around mile marker 243, the family ran into traffic, so they slowed their 2015 Ford Edge to a crawl of 10 miles per hour. Jesus Puebla, a 27-year-old driver for California-based Caminantes Trucking, struck the Ford Edge from behind at 76 miles per hour.
While the speed limit along I-25 is 75 mph, police later said that there was no evidence Puebla tried to steer away from the crash, with the Colorado State Patrol noting that he may have been “distracted.” That same report also found that Puebla did not have a commercial driver’s license, and that the truck itself had several brake violations, specifically defective or out of adjustment brakes.
“It’s obviously a shame what happened. It never should have happened,” Dan Sloane, a Denver attorney who specializes in trucking accidents, told FOX31. “From my perspective, a company has to be responsible for its drivers and this company was not responsible for its driver.”
Puebla was sentenced to 11 years in prison after a jury convicted him of five counts of vehicular homicide, and one count each of vehicular assault, careless driving and reckless driving, as well as a commercial vehicle safety violation and not having a commercial driver’s license. Meanwhile, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) fined Caminantes Trucking for $21,460.
Read more: Trucking improves on large crash rate, but fatalities still on rise
However, the crash that took the lives of the Godines family was not the last that Caminantes Trucking has been involved in. Over the past two years, the company’s trucks have been in two more fatal crashes, and could have been in more if FMCSA hadn’t placed the company’s 46 trucks out of service (OOS) on February 7, 2024.
Looking at Caminantes’ inspection records going back two years since December 9, 2024, the company has had 26 vehicle inspections, with 9 trucks placed OOS. That’s an out of service rate of 34%. It’s not hard to see why, as after the company’s deadly crash in Wyoming, several of their vehicles continued to exhibit safety violations. According to FMCSA’s records, the most common of these included brakes out of adjustment (Roto, Clamp (Short & Long), DD-3, or Bolt violations; an automatic airbrake adjustment system that fails to compensate for wear; and defective brake(s) that are equal to or greater than 20% of the service brakes on the vehicle/combination.
Preventing future truck crashes
It’s easy to write off Caminantes Trucking as a fleet that was simply too lax in its maintenance practices, or one that didn’t coach its drivers properly (or make sure they had their CDLs). But they are not the only fleet facing braking problems or distracted driving.
In 2024’s Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) International Roadcheck, there were 3,387 defective service brake OOS violations, making it the top issue for vehicles in North America. Of those violations, 2,700 were 20% service brake violations.
“The data shows that brake adjustment is a chronic problem, so carriers need to find a way to address this issue with their drivers,” said Jeremy Disbrow, roadside inspection specialist for CVSA. “Drivers should be inspecting their brakes routinely just like the other required components on the vehicle. If a driver is only checking lights and kicking tires during their pre-trip, defects will continue to be missed and brake violations will remain a common problem.”
Meanwhile, NHTSA also found that almost 5% of drivers in fatal traffic accidents experienced at least one distraction-related factor in 2021.
“When you really look at accidents nowadays, 90% of accidents on the road are basically due to human error,” Ken Charmevil, division vice president at Lily Transportation, told Fleet Maintenance in August 2024. “I can tell you that a high percentage of that human error is based off of distracted driving.”
But neither of these issues is impossible to prevent. Emphasizing careful brake inspections that examine damaged or loose-hanging air chambers, brake rotors for cracks, and air systems for moisture will stop dangerous trucks from getting on the road. And there’s plenty of technology to help prevent driver distraction, too. From advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that include collision mitigation measures such as automatic emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control, and lane keep assist to dash cams that help monitor for driver fatigue and distraction, fleets have more tools than ever at their disposal to avoid the tragedy like the one that befell the Godines family.
