Truck driver dies after crash on M62 bridge near Selby

An inquest held in Northallerton today (September 19) heard how Samuel Allen, 31, who worked as a truck driver for Delta Salvage in Sandtoft Road, Doncaster, died on Tuesday October 11 last year after his Scania truck crashed at 54mph into the Beal Lane bridge on the M62 westbound near Selby.

The accident closed the M62 in both directions that day as emergency services attended the scene.

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Giving evidence, PC Paddy Green, from North Yorkshire Police’s accident investigation team, said the vehicle’s trajectory and the fact there were no signs of breakage meant Samuel may have had “microsleep”, which is very short periods of sleep that are measured can be seconds instead of minutes in the moments before the crash.

In summary, York and North Yorkshire Region Coroner Catherine Cundy said she could not say categorically whether this was the case, but the vehicle’s trajectory was consistent with it and concluded that Samuel died in a road accident .

At the hearing, the coroner said Mr Allen was driving on the M62 when his vehicle left the road and collided with the bridge parapet. His death was confirmed at the scene.

His father, Rob, said his son, who was 6-foot-3, was “incredibly generous, considerate, kind and helpful and a joy to be with.”

“He was very popular, he was a big guy with a big personality – he left a big hole in our lives.”

He described Samuel, who lived in Doncaster, as a workaholic who “never did things by halves” and who had been dating his partner Clare Esler for two and a half years.

The inquest heard he had visited Clare at her home in Glasgow the weekend before the crash.

She said he was supposed to go to a dentist appointment the morning of the accident and she spoke to him afterwards and he “sounded terrible” and told her that his tooth was crushed over the gum and that the root was stuck. He told her he was going to work, but he was “just doing yard work.”

The inquest heard a statement from Angelica Tadros-Hadwin, a dentist at the Portman Dental and Implant Clinic in Scunthorpe, where Samuel went to have a molar removed on the morning of the accident.

She said the root had not come out and Samuel decided to refer him for further treatment at a later date. He was given anesthesia and prescribed antibiotics.

Dental assistant Lauren Callaghan, who x-rayed Samuel, said that when he spoke to her he said he “hadn’t slept yet” and that he planned to go home to bed. She said he didn’t seem tired at the time.

Explaining the timeline of events, the Corner said Samuel left Doncaster at 2.20pm on Sunday, October 9 and went to his partner in Scotland. He was due to collect three vehicles for work in Northern Ireland on Monday October 10 and then take a ferry at 4.30pm on Monday where he slept in his vehicle overnight.

On the day of the crash, he arrived at Delta’s Doncaster shipyard at 9:11 a.m., having made the return journey at 5:40 a.m. after getting off the ferry. He arrived at the dentist in Scunthorpe at 10.25am, left at 11.31am and returned to the Delta yard at 12.25pm. At 1.55pm he left with a delivery to Middlesbrough, the accident occurred at around 2.26pm.

Samuel’s cause of death was listed as a fractured pelvis and internal bleeding due to a ruptured liver.