By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
A CRST driver jacknifed on Slip Hill June 1st. The incident occurred around noon on Holly Meadows Road between St. George and Parsons.
The truck slid off of Holly Meadows Road on the curve on the way to Parsons from St. George, according to witnesses. The truck was eventually pulled out by Nelson’s, according to locals.
The incident ignited on ongoing debate online about the use of GPS by commercial drivers exclusively, leading to an apparent lack of common sense and judgment. Debate also raged over the use of non-English speaking drivers by companies.
Officials with the State Department of Transportation have expressed frustration in the past while at the office in Elkins during a Corridor H Open House with County officials and members of the public in May of 2023. During that meeting Deputy State Highway Engineer Joe Pack explained that the State constantly contacts GPS and trucking companies regarding the issue.
“We reach out to all these mapping companies consistently through our IT Department,” Pack said in 2023. “And we give them information and we tell them, you can go to our site, wv.transportation.gov, you can go in there and look and it will have our road system on there with the proper names and proper route numbers on them. And Google and these other companies don’t give any changes or any feedback to us. We reach out.”
Pack also said that much of the problems stem from modern reliance on GPS and language issues. Pack said during the meeting that there have been issues with drivers not being able to read the signs that warn them that roads are not recommended for large vehicles. He also explained to those present during the open house that while these roads may only be one lane or not recommended for those vehicles, they cannot legally keep drivers off of them because they are public highways.
“We do reach out to these companies, however, we can’t control it and all of our roads are public roads and there’s only a few instances where we actually prohibit certain type of vehicles from using our roads and its usually just because the bridges can’t hold their weight…We cannot prohibit any vehicles from using our roads. We can only recommend,” Pack said.
