Two wrecks shut down I-75 northbound this morning.A man was killed when two tractor-trailers crashed into each other on Interstate 75 just before 5 a.m. today, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
The fatal crash happened when traffic on the northbound side of I-75 was already backed up from a separate, three-vehicle crash about 40 minutes earlier, said Sgt. Alan Bailey.
The first crash involved three vehicles and happened at 4:03 a.m. at mile marker 14, he said. Three people were injured, one seriously. All three people involved in the crash were wearing seat belts, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Then, at 4:40 a.m., two tractor trailers approached the backed up traffic on I-75 at mile marker 13. Both were driving north in the right lane, Bailey said, when the first tractor-trailer stopped for the traffic.
The second tractor-trailer tried to avoid the first truck by merging into the left lane, but the right front of the rear truck smashed into the left rear of the first truck, he said.
Two people were in the rear tractor-trailer, and the passenger in that truck, James Newman, 66, of Athens, Tenn., was killed. The driver of the rear tractor-trailer, 43-year-old Danny Caldwell, was injured. The driver of the first truck, Cindy Kennedy, 50, was not hurt. All three people involved in the crash were wearing seat belts, according to the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Bailey said that as of 9:45 a.m., the interstate is completely shut down while workers pull the tractor trailers out of the road. He said he expects at least some lanes to re-open in about an hour.
Today's crashes happened just slightly north of the massive June 25, 2015, crash that killed six people. In that incident, a tractor-trailer came up on slowed traffic and plowed into eight other vehicles before finally coming to a stop.
The Times Free Press investigated the crash and published a four-part series in Dec. 2015 that exposed Chattanooga's interstates as particularly vulnerable to trucking crashes because of myriad local and national factors.
Bailey said that the stretch of I-75 where all three crashes happened is known as a crowded area.
"It's a high-traffic, congested area," he said.
Between 2003 and 2013, there were nine fatal trucking crashes in the about four-mile stretch north of Exit 11 on I-75, between mile marker 11 and mile marker 16, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.