TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- Two highway police officers and a truck driver were killed early this morning in Tainan City when the driver of another truck dozed off and swerved into them, reported Apple Daily.

At about 5 a.m. this morning, as two highway police officers were ticketing a truck driver at the 308 km mark on the Madou Section of Freeway 1 in Tainan City, they were suddenly crushed and killed when another truck driver plowed into the truck which had been pulled over. The police and truck driver where standing behind the patrol car and in front of the truck which they had pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, when the driver of another truck dozed off and swerved onto the shoulder before smashing into the parked truck and sandwiching the three men between their respective vehicles.

The impact of the swerving truck was so great that it hurled the parked truck 17 meters. Before the debris was cleared, traffic had backed up six kilometers behind the scene of the accident.

The driver of the second truck, identified as Lu I-hao (陸乙豪), 43, who appeared dazed and fatigued, admitted to police that while he was originally driving on the outside lane, he dozed off and his truck then swerved onto the shoulder before smashing into the parked vehicles.

The dead have been identified as highway police officers Kuo Chen-hsiung (郭振雄), 50, and Yeh Chia-hao (葉家豪),38, while the truck driver who perished was Hsiao Wei-chih (蕭偉誌), 43.



(CNA image)



(CNA image)