Friday afternoon, troopers said Wesley Merrick, 55, and Alicia Eve Cornell, 46, both of Wellsville, N.Y., were the people who died at the scene of the crash.
Merrick was driving the SUV involved in the crash. Cornell was a passenger.
A crew flew Merrick’s 49-year-old wife, who was the front seat passenger in the SUV, to R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Medics took another SUV passenger, a 59-year-old man, to Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown. . .
Troopers said Merrick’s SUV hit the rear of a tractor trailer that started to brake because of traffic. That began a chain reaction that caused three other tractor trailers and a pickup truck to collide with each other. 2 from New York dead after tractor trailers, SUV, truck crash on I-81 in Washington County
Because the bottom of a truck is higher than the bumper of passenger vehicles, when there is a collision the smaller vehicle easily slides under the truck and the first point of impact is the windshield. Seatbelts, airbags, and car crumple zones do not function as intended in underride crashes —front, side, and rear — leaving passenger vehicle occupants vulnerable to life-threatening injuries.
Wesley Merrick, Precious One Gone Too Soon
See Underride Crash Memorials posted here and at #STOPunderrides Tweets. To add photos or more information on this story or to add other underride crashes to be remembered, send an email to underridemap@gmail.com. Please use this Interactive Underride Crash Map Crash Location Input Form to provide us with accurate information . (Note: the map is currently not online; but we would keep the information for future updating and to aid in underride advocacy efforts.)
Support improving Underride Protection on trailers: Contact your legislators with this User-Friendly TAKE ACTION online tool.
Please sign this petition: Secretary Pete, It’s Past Time To End Death By Underride!
Note: In order to raise awareness and preserve the memories of underride victims — precious ones gone too soon — I have been writing memorial posts on what could potentially be underride crashes. I am not a crash reconstructionist, and I do not have all the facts on these crashes; but underride should be investigated as a potential factor in truck crash injuries and deaths.
We are asking that people send us crash reports for collisions with trucks which they suspect involved underride. Send them to marianne@annaleahmary.com. We will submit these as complaints to USDOT. Read more here: Launching a Campaign To Flood NHTSA With Underride Complaint Reports.
