SOUTH SALT LAKE, Utah, Sept. 26, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — Officials said only one man suffered minor injuries after a bizarre four-vehicle chain-reaction crash in South Salt Lake Wednesday morning.
South Salt Lake Police Department spokesman Gary Keller told Gephardt Daily the unusual sequence of events, which occurred at 8:34 a.m. at 3300 South and West Temple, involved a school bus, a van carrying adults with disabilities, a pickup truck, and a semi-tractor.
Keller said a red pickup truck was eastbound on 3300 South, getting ready to turn left, or north, onto West Temple, and a school bus carrying between 20 and 25 elementary age children was southbound at West Temple at a red light.
There was also a van from the Columbus Center, a community center located in South Salt Lake, carrying three to five adults with disabilities, coming through the intersection.
Keller said the man driving the pickup truck had the sun in his eyes at the time of the crash, and thought the intersection was clear, and as he started to make a left turn onto West Temple, the van T-boned the pickup truck.
The pickup truck then spun and rotated so the back of the pickup truck hit the front of the school bus.
The driver of the pickup truck suffered only minor injuries and pulled over to the side of the road, Keller said.
However, a piece of metal, probably from the pickup truck, that Keller likened to a “metal brick,” launched from the vehicle and hit the windscreen of a semi-tractor that was parked at the Maverik at 3260 S. West Temple. Keller said the driver of that vehicle was parked and enjoying a cup of coffee. The impact of that piece of metal caused shards of glass to go all over the driver, through the safety windscreen did not break completely. Keller said the driver of the semi-tractor was wearing sunglasses and was not injured.
In the end, no one from any of the vehicles had to be transported and traffic is now flowing normally, Keller said.
Gephardt Daily will have more on this developing story as information is made available.
