A truck driver has no choice but to retire after suffering a seizure at the wheel, causing a crash into the mountainside.
The accident happened last Friday in Golden Colorado, marking the second seizure for 30-year-old truck driver Ramiro Loya, but his first one while driving his rig.
According to Fox 31, Loya was on his way to Golden, Colorado to pick up a load when he suddenly began seizing.
“At first, I thought he was messing around but he wouldn’t respond and then five to ten seconds later I heard an impact. I heard him crash,” said Loya’s girlfriend Gabriela Lopez.
The crash into the side of the mountain mangled the semi truck and seriously injured Loya. Loya sustained gashes to his face, a broken elbow, fractures to his spine, and split tendons.
“He hauls material in the canyon in Golden,” said Lopez. “So, on the right side, there’s the mountain, and on the left side it’s a river. Looking at the picture you assume that he broke every single bone in his body. That’s how horrible it was.”
Loya says that this was his second seizure in a year. The doctor cleared him to drive after the first one, but this second seizure means he will have to give up his decade-long trucking career.
“The doctors mentioned if he didn’t have a seizure three months after the initial seizure he was okay to go back to work. They knew his profession truck driving. They said as long as you don’t have one in the next three months you’re okay to go back to work,” she said. “We don’t know what caused it but I was scared obviously. It’s always been something in the back of my mind like what if he has one while driving and it sucks that it happened.”
“I think it’s hard for him to realize he can’t ever go back to that career, but I think we’ll find something else for him to do,” said Lopez. “Seeing him and seeing his semi you wouldn’t think that he’d be here today so I’m thankful.”