A long-time truck driver is looking to make a change after being injured by a falling trailer door while on the job in Ohio.
Trucker Amy Larcom comes from a long line of truck drivers and felt passionate about her job – that is until she had a freak accident with a trailer door that she says nearly cost her her life.
“I was tired. It was around 12:20 at night. I noticed the door open. I noticed it hanging a little funny, but I went just back to close the door, and as soon as I went back the whole door fell on my body,” Larcom explained to ABC 13.
The 170 pound door then fell right on top of Larcom, leaving her with a laundry list of lingering health issues. Now, Larcom is working to change laws and regulations surrounding the construction of trailer door hitches in hopes that no fellow trucker will suffer her same fate.
“I’m still recovering, which I’m not recovering very well. I got inflammation on my face here. My eyes are dark. I have lumps in the back of my head from the whiplash. You can see how bad my hands look. I constantly get where my hands bleed. I went to the hospital and now I basically just have bad credit,” Larcom said.
Since her accident, Larcom has been in contact with United States Senator Sherrod Brown to try to make changes regarding how the trailer door hinges are made. She believes they are unsafe, and put other drivers at risk of injuries like hers.
“The laws need to be changed so that nobody, no truck driver, gets injured like this,” she said.
“The aluminum hinges are unsafe. They break and you don’t know it’s broken. The aluminum doesn’t work. If it breaks it falls right away so it doesn’t hurt the trailer.”
Larcom is still working to recover from her ordeal and isn’t yet able to get back on the road, but until then, she plans to continue working towards a change in the regulations surrounding the construction of trailer door hinges. she believes that the aluminum hinges should be replaced with steel to avoid the sort of crumbling that led to her injury.
“When I relive this whole nightmare, I wish I didn’t go to work that night.”