The Ultimate Stupidity: A Cast Member Is Dead

[Big Wallaby]

Heather Hurd of the Magic Kingdom, was killed Thursday on Highway 27. Her fiance, PJ, a KSR driver, was driving. They were on their way to her parents house for a wedding planning session. They were stopped at a red light, when a tractor trailer slammed into their car. Heather was killed on impact, PJ is in the hospital but he will be alright, physically. As of this morning, the update was that he was not coherent enough due to the painkillers he was on to understand what had happened. I assume he probably learned that today. I know not how he is coping, I don't know him at all, otherwise I would be one of the ones visiting him. Heather was close friends with quite a few Safari drivers.

The truck driver, 61-year-old David Lunger, got away with only a few minor cuts. Lucky bastard. The only consolation is that he will now have to answer for his stupidity, and while he should pay dearly, he will never pay as dearly as her family who lost their daughter, or PJ who lost his beloved.

From what I've seen so far, it sounds like he just wasn't paying attention, didn't see the cars stopped, and plowed right through them. All in all, he involved eight passenger cars and one other truck.

Honestly? I don't care what his excuse is. For whatever reasons, he was not paying attention to the road. When you drive a vehicle that large, how dare you not pay attention? How dare you lose focus for a second? When you are a professional driver, it is neither an acceptable excuse, nor is there any excuse I want to hear. The other cars were sitting at a red light. All were traveling north on US 27. He claims he was "distracted" by his electronic logbook and as a result hit them... and then ran over them. Your logbook is not a device you should ever be looking at while driving, and especially when you are driving on a road with turns and lights. I hope this trucker goes to jail. I hope he goes into gen pop and someone "leaks" that he is a pedophile.

Here are links to news articles. I have to warn you, a couple have pictures that are very difficult to see, especially when you factor in that members of our Disney family were involved and died. But as Cast Members, you have an obligation to know and see what happened to one of our own.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/communit ... 1389.story

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/special ... ryid=71094

http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.d ... 03038/1086

And the really difficult one, http://www.theledger.com/article/200801 ... /FRONTPAGE

I am furious about this. Much of my rage comes from knowing that had it been me at the wheel, two women would still be alive in this case. While I do not know the young lady killed, I know people who had a rough day at work because she is gone, and they are not the ones who were closest to her.

My thing with stupid guests has always been when they ruin someone else's trip to Disney World. Well, this guy just ruined a bunch of peoples' lives, and ended two.

The lucky ones are the ones who were in this event (I refuse to call it an accident) who walked away, were checked out at the hospital and had only their vacation ruined.

Even in the last moment this trucker didn't do the right thing. He should have at least tried to take his load off the road in an attempt to lessen the impact on the road around him. Yes, I do know that what I am suggesting he should have done would probably have ended his life as he probably would have flipped the truck the moment he hit the dirt. But I am only suggesting he do what I would have done in his situation, had I been that stupid. It's the same as when I was in my bus, when a car would pull in front of me and I would make the decision that my actions, should the person in that car not change their course, was going to kill anyone in that car so I could save the lives of my guests and any innocent bystanders.

[mechurchlady]

Churchy hugs and holds tight Wallay, so sad and so well said. So sad indeed. Prayers and hugs is all I offer. At 67 you think he would have known better. I feel as you do Wallaby and what you said I would say if I was as eloquent as you.

[Whazzup]

Ah Wallaby, what a tragic thing for you to be a part of. Not directly, but as a part of your Disney family. I feel for you and for the other members of your family, as well as Heather's and PJ's families. Words are never enough, but you and they will be in our thoughts and prayers. Our condolensces are with you and them.

[Shorty82]

My condolences to the victims' families and friends and to the CMs who knew the girl.

The truck driver made a very serious mistake and should pay for it. It is dangerous enough to get distracted while driving a normal car and at least 100 times more dangerous to do in a large vehicle. His electronic log could and should have waited until he got to his next stop or until he could pull off the road somewhere safe. I hope as a minimum he gets charged with manslaughter and goes to jail for a long time and has his driver's licenses permanently revoked. Not just his trucker license but also his regular one so if/when he gets out he won't be a danger on the road.

I agree about him trying to take his load off the road. Just recently a fully loaded truck going through downtown Pensacola lost his brakes while trying to stop at an intersection and the truck started speeding up. To stop his truck and avoid a very serious accident the driver cut his wheels real sharp in an intersection to intentionally turn the truck over. Thankfully the road was empty and and he was able to get the truck to a good place to flip it without hitting any other vehicles. The road was blocked for a long time as the truck and its load was cleaned up. Nobody was injured though the rig knocked down a street sign and traffic light. That accident was truly and accident and could have been a whole lot worse but the driver did the right thing to stop the truck before he hit a car or pedestrian.

[darph nader]

Not to distract from the tragedy,but 'maybe' the driver was mandated to do do his electronic log. Some companys are so HARDCORE about that shit. :(

(you 'must' be here by 'this' time,OR ELSE!!!)
But all in all,this SUCKS. The driver has to live with this the rest of his life.

[ktulu]

Sorry you guys lost another CM. We'll keep the family, friends and fellow CM's in our prayers.

[StephM]

Big W, I am so sorry for you, your co-workers, and the families and friends of those ladies. What a senseless thing.

My grandmother dated a trucker a while back. He did just what you said on a highway. A car cut him off, he knew he could not stop. He ended up flipping his truck off the side of the road. My grandmother was in the cab. He died and she broke her back. But she said he had to keep from hitting the car....there may have been kids inside. :(

The electronic log book, I don't know what to say. When will people realize that emailing, texting, doing everything but driving will eventually cause something horrific?! We had 6 cheerleaders die on the thruway here. The driver was texting and drove into the side of a tractor trailer. Both vehicles careened off the road. The SUV they were in flipped over and burst into flames. All were killed. The truck driver was injured as well, I think, and probably will be haunted the rest of his life, even though the girls' friends were in a car behind them and said the truck driver could not have done anything to prevent it. :(

[DisneyMom]

I am truly sorry, BW. This was so senseless, and I can only hope that Florida and every state will clamp down on distracted drivers. We as a society need to stop compulsively communicating/catching up on work every freakin'
second. :mad:

[felinefan]

More investigating will have to be done to get to the full story, but I agree, some trucking companies are too anal about things. I believe more loads should go by train. As long as people don't try to go around the gates, and stop, look and listen at crossings that have no gates or warning devices, train travel is safe. There's a train safety site you should look at: http://www.oli.org. It's called Operation Lifesaver, and they have statistics on incidents between cars and trains, as well as pedestrians and trains. For the most part, Texas has the worst death and injury toll California for the most part runs third, and I didn't check where Florida is. But whether it's a car, truck, bus, airplane, train or whatever, you need to obey safety rules. When you go to the site, check out the PSAs and posters, as well as the kid stuff. You will need Quicktime to view the videos, but they offer it as a free download if you don't have it on your computer.

I have several uncles who are/were in trucking, and they say trucking companies don't always do what they're supposed to do for their truckers. They make them drive too far on too little sleep, put unrealistic deadlines on them, and otherwise don't help reduce the accident rate. Now, I have seen some great truckers who were true "knights of the road", but like any occupation, there are good ones, bad ones and indifferent ones. I agree, this 61 year old driver should never be allowed to drive professionally again.

[GRUMPY PIRATE]

That is so very sad. Prayers to the families of all.

I will also point out the very recently, Mexico truckers are now allowed to drive in the United States. Even though they do not have the training that the U.S. Drivers are required to have. Driver inattention and fatigue are the biggest reasons for accidents in large trucks.

A number of years ago, while driving on a freewy, my partner and I saw a truck coming in the opposite direction, it went onto the sholder of the freeway, then fell on its side and skidded. My partner was a paramedic, so we responded and called the highway patrol. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. His wife and 6 year old daughter were in the sleeper. They were alright, but he was a little bunged up. He told us right there that he had woken up only after the truck had flopped over on its side. it was about 10 A.M., and he had been driving since the night before, to make up his time.

Addendum: is there a place that we could donate something to help?