The Minnesota State Patrol has a message for all motorists: Secure your loads.
The patrol also has a message for the driver who was hauling a wooden crate on I-35 last Saturday and didn't: Authorities are looking for you and are asking the public to help in the search.
Christopher Pate, 27, of St. Paul, was driving north on I-35 near the Broadway exit in Forest Lake around 11:30 p.m. when he struck the crate at freeway speed. He was not hurt, but 20-year-old Allonte Combs, a friend riding in the car, was seriously injured when planks came crashing through the window.
The roads are dangerous enough without having to dodge objects that fall off vehicles. Yet it happens thousands of times year with serious consequences, as this shows. It's so common that the Minnesota State Patrol along with the Minnesota Department of Transportation designated June 6 this year as Secure Your Load Day.
Back in June, motorcyclist Brendan Jankowski, 20, was hurt when he collided with a rolled-up foam pad that flew off the back of a boat pulled by an SUV on I-94 in Woodbury. Another motorist had her dashcam running when the incident happened and posted the video on YouTube. Read my colleague Hannah Covington's story here. That driver came forward. Jankowski suffered minor injuries
The Government Accountability Office found that there are 51,000 incidents involving unsecured loads in the United States each year, killing 440 people and injuring 10,000.
Through mid-June, the Minnesota, the State Patrol has been called 2,479 times to remove everything from ladders, mattresses and even full-sized plastic playhouses from roadways in the metro area. Statewide, the patrol has had more than 5,000 calls. In the past five years troopers have issued 1,673 unsecured load citations to passenger vehicle drivers and 9,331 warnings.
Minnesota law says all loads must be secured so as not to shift, blow off or come loose, but it does not specify how a load has to be secured. Here is what the State Patrol advises:
