Nearly three months after a semi-truck veered off Interstate 80 and demolished part of a Rawlins-area bridge, Wyoming Highway Patrol has yet to publicly say what caused the truck to leave the highway, while the state is preparing to take bids to repair the battered overpass.
Now, dramatic video of the July 20 crash shows just how much worse it could have been.
The westbound tractor-trailer is seen leaving the interstate and barreling through the median, throwing up a widening cloud of dirt as it heads almost directly toward the Higley Boulevard bridge.
It hits the median cable barrier and keeps going.
Seconds later, the truck slams into the concrete bridge supports. Debris erupts as the tractor separates from the trailer and continues beyond the bridge.
The two people inside survived with injuries that were not life-threatening.
After watching the video, University of Wyoming highway safety engineer Khaled Ksaibati said if the truck continued across the median and into eastbound traffic, people likely would've died.
“Oh my God,” he said while watching the truck encounter the median cable barrier. “This would have been disastrous."
Ksaibati said the barrier helped keep the 18-wheeler from traveling into oncoming interstate traffic.
Otherwise, he said, “we would have had multiple, definitely multiple, fatalities.”
“WYDOT prevented that semi from moving into the opposite direction, and they definitely saved lots of lives by doing this,” he said.
What Happened
The crash happened at about 9 a.m. July 20 near Exit 214.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol reported the semi was westbound when it drifted off the pavement and entered the median.
The truck struck the median cable barrier and eastbound guardrail before crashing into the concrete bridge supports, destroying it.
The trailer came to rest with the remaining three supports embedded in it. The tractor separated from the trailer and continued beyond the bridge on top of the guardrail.
Cowboy State Daily reached out to WHP to learn whether investigators have since determined what caused the lane departure and whether any citations or charges resulted from the crash.
This story will be updated when more information becomes available.
Solution Inside The Cab?
The video was posted to X by Rob Carpenter, a trucking industry writer and investigator who covers trucking and transportation policy.
Along with the footage, Carpenter wrote, "Lane departure warning cuts crashes 14%. I don't love emergency braking but I could go with Lane departure."
The technology monitors a vehicle's position within its lane and alerts the driver when the vehicle begins drifting out of it without an apparent intentional lane change.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has cited the same figure, based on research from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.
Ksaibati said technology inside vehicles can be useful, but it is only one layer in preventing roadway-departure crashes.
Highway engineers also try to keep vehicles on the pavement — and, when that fails, keep the resulting wreck from becoming deadly.
The Rawlins video shows both problems unfolding within seconds.
Lane Departure
Ksaibati, director of the Wyoming Technology Transfer Center at UW, has spent years studying roadway safety in the state, and says vehicles leaving their lanes aren't a minor category of Wyoming wrecks.
WYDOT crash data show lane- and road-departure crashes represented about 57% of all crashes from 2019 through 2023.
They accounted for an even larger share of the worst wrecks: 76.5% of critical crashes over that five-year period.
In 2023 alone, 78% of critical crashes involved a lane or road departure.
“They cause lots of fatalities and severe injuries at the end,” Ksaibati said.
A roadway-departure crash doesn't necessarily mean a vehicle simply wanders off the shoulder and lands in the ditch.
Vehicles can drift across the centerline and sideswipe another vehicle or collide head-on with oncoming traffic.
Distraction, fatigue, impairment, and speed are some of the most likely culprits behind drivers leaving their lanes, said Ksaibati.
Rumble Strips
Rumble strips — the grooves motorists hear and feel when their tires begin wandering toward the shoulder or across certain centerlines — are designed to get a driver's attention before the vehicle gets any farther out of its lane.
“We have done lots of research about rumble strips, and we found that rumble strips are extremely effective,” Ksaibati said.
WYDOT uses them extensively on highways where roadway geometry allows it, he said.
“It's a proven technology, and WYDOT is using it everywhere," Ksaibati said.
Other countermeasures include high-friction pavement treatments in areas where vehicles are prone to leaving the road, improved pavement markings, warning signs, reflective chevrons and speed management.
Wyoming's variable speed limits are another example.
Ksaibati pointed to stretches of I-80 between Cheyenne, Laramie and Rawlins, where posted speeds can be lowered as weather and highway conditions deteriorate.
Those systems only work, however, if drivers respond.
“They need to take this seriously and reduce their speeds so that they don't end up in the ditch at the end,” Ksaibati said.
What Happens After A Vehicle Leaves
Highway safety engineering also assumes something unavoidable: Not every vehicle will stay on the road.
That's where clear zones, breakaway roadside equipment, guardrails and median barriers come in.
Rather than preventing the initial mistake, they're designed to reduce what happens afterward.
The cable barrier visible in the Rawlins video is intended to help prevent vehicles that enter the median from crossing into opposing traffic.
That was the part of the footage that immediately caught Ksaibati's attention.
A tractor-trailer entering the eastbound lanes of I-80 could have produced an entirely different outcome, particularly if it collided head-on with vehicles traveling interstate speeds.
“If a person or a driver would end up being involved in this kind of crash, at least we would minimize the damage at the end,” he said.
In Rawlins, the damage was anything but minor.
The semi still struck the bridge hard enough to obliterate one of the concrete supports holding it up. But the truck did not wind up traveling through oncoming interstate traffic, and the people inside survived.
Bridge Repairs Pending
The City of Rawlins closed the Higley Boulevard bridge immediately after the wreck so engineers could evaluate the damage, and while I-80 remains open, the overpass is still closed nearly three months later.
The collision destroyed one of its four concrete supports and damaged the structure badly enough to require a separate WYDOT repair contract; but the bridge wasn't the only damaged I-80 bridge WYDOT was already dealing with.
Two other structures — one in Cheyenne and the Exit 211/Spruce Street bridge in Rawlins — were damaged before the Higley Boulevard crash and were ahead of it in the repair process.
WYDOT said in late August the Exit 214 repairs would therefore be handled as a separate project.
That project is scheduled for October bid letting, with bids set to open next Thursday.
The Wyoming Transportation Commission is scheduled to meet Oct. 15, when contracts can be considered for award.
WYDOT said more information about the actual repair schedule will be available once scheduling is finalized.
So, nearly three months after the semi left I-80, two questions remain.
Why it happened. And when the bridge will be whole again.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
