A 65-year-old truck driver from Orland Park, Illinois, was killed Sunday night after his semi slammed into two rigs stopped at a red light on U.S. 30 in Kosciusko County, in a crash that unfolded shortly after 8 p.m. at the intersection with State Road 13. The two drivers of the stopped semis were not hurt.
Police were called to the intersection of U.S. 30 and State Road 13 after the crash, according to a preliminary investigation described by WSBT. Investigators believe two westbound semis were stopped at a red light when a third semi rear-ended one of them and then continued driving into the other stopped truck. The driver killed was identified as Richard Bacorn, and the Kosciusko County Sheriff's Office provided photos from the scene as the investigation remains underway.
The stretch of highway has seen this kind of collision before. Roughly six years earlier, in September 2020, the same intersection in Pierceton was the site of a similar three-vehicle rear-end crash around 8 p.m. that sent a vehicle up in flames and three people to area hospitals, according to the same account from News Now Warsaw.
A Freight Corridor Built for Speed, Slowed by Stoplights
U.S. 30 is part of the federal Primary Highway Freight System, carrying disproportionately heavy volumes of commercial truck traffic through northern Indiana as it links major freight hubs in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne, per Allen Law Group. That heavy truck traffic mixes with old-fashioned stoplights at rural intersections like the one at State Road 13, a combination officials say creates dangerous stopping scenarios for big rigs moving at highway speed.
The Indiana Department of Transportation and local officials have been running a multi-county Planning and Environmental Linkages study covering 180 miles of U.S. 30 to weigh converting the corridor into a full freeway and removing stoplight intersections altogether, according to Kosciusko County government. In February, INDOT proposed swapping several rural signals along U.S. 30 in Kosciusko and Marshall counties for reduced-conflict intersections in fiscal years 2030 through 2031, aiming to stop the “speed yo-yoing” that contributes to heavy truck rear-end collisions, as reported by WVPE.
Local Pushback Over Amish Buggies and Farm Equipment
Not everyone is on board with the redesign. Kosciusko County officials voiced skepticism earlier this year over INDOT's proposed intersection changes along U.S. 30, worried about how the new layouts might create hazards for local agricultural machinery and horse-drawn Amish buggies that regularly cross the highway, according to the same WVPE report. The tension underscores how a corridor built for high-speed freight also has to accommodate slower, distinctly rural traffic patterns that don't disappear just because trucking volume keeps climbing.
And that volume is expected to keep climbing. The U.S. 30 Coalition projects that daily traffic along the corridor in northern Indiana could grow from roughly 30,000 vehicles a day to as many as 80,000 as distribution and manufacturing centers continue to expand in the region.
Statewide Numbers Show a Persistent Problem
Sunday's crash adds to a grim statewide tally. Indiana recorded more than 1,600 commercial semi-truck accidents in 2025 alone, resulting in more than 70 deaths and 2,100 injuries, with commercial drivers found at fault in roughly half of those incidents, according to data cited by Allen Law Group. Indiana law requires drivers to maintain a reasonable and prudent following distance based on a vehicle's size, speed, and road conditions under Indiana Code § 9-21-8-14, a standard that typically anchors law enforcement crash reconstructions and fault determinations in rear-end truck collisions, per Christie Bell & Marshall.
No cause has been officially determined in Sunday's fatal crash, and the investigation into what happened at U.S. 30 and State Road 13 remains ongoing.
