(WSB reader photo from Monday afternoon, looking southwestward toward the tipped truck and its spilled load)
New information today about the crab-truck crash that closed the northbound Alaskan Way Viaduct for hours on Monday (WSB coverage here): Seattle Police say the driver is expected to be cited for negligent driving – going too fast and making an “unsafe lane change” toward the south end of the elevated section. Fine: $550, says SDOT, whose Commercial Vehicle Enforcement section is taking the lead on the investigation; so far, we’re told, it appears to have been strictly driver error, not a problem with the truck’s load. What happened to those spilled boxes of crab? Basically, SPD spokesperson Sgt. Sean Whitcomb told us, it had to be discarded – either to garbage or compost – once it had fallen onto a roadway, there’s no way to verify it’s safe enough even to donate, let alone sell; the city is “not in the business of subjecting someone to (potentially) contaminated goods.” And, unlike the fish-truck crash that blocked southbound 99 almost exactly one year ago, salvaging the load was not a priority – clearing the road was. “Our efforts were centered on just getting (the truck) off (the roadway),” Whitcomb stressed. This incident was a big test of the plan the city announced last August, four-plus months after the fish-truck crash exposed glaring flaws in coordination between city agencies like SDOT and SPD, among other things.
P.S. Guard-rail repairs will close the right NB lane at Monday’s crash scene for a while tonight, starting around 7:30 pm, per WSDOT.
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