North Dakota Woman Killed in Collision with Abandoned Maintenance Vehicle

A Bismarck woman was killed in a horrifying accident this past weekend.

A horrifying event happened in North Dakota this past weekend. AP News reported that a 43-year-old Bismarck woman named Kelli Hagerott was killed when the vehicle she was riding in struck an abandoned maintenance truck on Interstate 94 near Tower City, North Dakota. Three others, 42-year-old Tim Hagerott as well as a nine-year-old and 14-year-old were severely injured and transported to a Fargo hospital.

The abandoned maintenance truck was reportedly left in the driving lane.

What is so disturbing about this life-changing accident is that the abandoned maintenance truck was reportedly left in the righthand lane of the highway because of a mechanical issue. We do not yet know many details about the abandoned truck, but how scary is it that the vehicle was allegedly just left in a driving lane?

My dad once hit a vehicle left in the driving lane on the highway.

Something similar to this once happened to my dad. Years ago, there was a days-long snowstorm that made travel nearly impossible. My dad is a truck driver and drives about 30 miles to work, one way, every day. And he had to work despite the weather. On the second day of the snowstorm, he got into a bad accident thanks to a vehicle abandoned in a driving lane.

Part of the stretch of Highway 83 my dad drives to work is two lanes. And the day he drove out in the snowstorm, those two lanes of the highway were covered in snow. My dad drove up on what he thought was a snowdrift when all of a sudden he hit something solid. His truck became airborne and flipped onto its top into the ditch. Luckily, my dad was close enough to his friend's house that his friend could come and help him.

My dad was in pain but he had to wait at his friend's house for hours because no help could make it out to his friend's house to bring him to the hospital. When the storm ended, my dad went to the hospital where he found out that his back was broken. He was also informed that there was a vehicle abandoned in the driving lane when the storm first started. Not only that, a semi-truck actually hit the car the day before. Both the semi-truck driver and my dad were lucky to survive those accidents.

There has been a GoFundMe page set up to raise funds for the Hagerotts.