A van carrying seven Dutch nationals ran a stop sign on Yankee Street in Knox County, Ohio, and was broadsided by a northbound tractor-trailer on State Route 13 on Tuesday, killing three people and sending four others, including the driver, to local hospitals.
The Ford Transit van was headed west on Yankee Street when its driver, identified as 48-year-old Gijs Odpam of the Netherlands, failed to yield at a stop sign, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, as reported by NBC4 WCMH-TV. The van was struck by a Kenworth tractor-trailer driven north on State Route 13 by 51-year-old James Cline of Mount Vernon, per the same report. Three of the van's seven occupants were pronounced dead at the scene.
The victims killed in the crash were identified as 55-year-old Arno Kramer, 44-year-old Martijn van Vooren, and 55-year-old Harmanus Fortuin, all of the Netherlands. Odpam and three other passengers were taken to local hospitals for treatment, according to the outlet's report; their conditions have not been detailed.
A Rural Highway With a History of Deadly Crashes
State Route 13 runs roughly 166 miles from Athens County north to Huron, cutting through Knox County as a major north-south corridor that connects Mount Vernon and Fredericktown, according to background compiled on Wikipedia. The highway carries heavy regional traffic through Licking, Knox, and Richland counties. Hoodline previously reported on a fatal SR 13 pileup in Licking County in July 2025, in which a driver lost control and swiped multiple vehicles before overturning.
Fatal failure-to-yield crashes at rural Ohio intersections are not isolated incidents. Just days earlier, Hoodline reported on a crash in Logan County where a driver blew a stop sign on County Road 130 and pulled into the path of an oncoming vehicle on State Route 235, killing a 51-year-old Bellefontaine man. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 4511.43(A), every driver approaching a stop sign must come to a complete stop and yield to any vehicle close enough to pose an immediate hazard, a standard that governs how investigators assess fault in crashes like this one.
Statewide Numbers Show the Pattern
Data released by the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Governor's Office in January showed traffic fatalities statewide dropped 3% in 2025 to 1,125, even as failure to yield and running stop signs remained among the leading contributing factors in fatal crashes, according to Hometown Stations. Separately, commercial vehicle crashes in Ohio climbed to 17,614 in 2025, an increase of more than 1,000 collisions over each of the prior two years, per statewide crash tracking reported by Plakas Mannos.
Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also notes that multi-passenger vans handle differently and require longer stopping distances when fully loaded with seven or more occupants, since the added weight raises the vehicle's center of gravity and alters emergency maneuvering. The Ford Transit involved in Tuesday's crash was carrying all seven of its occupants at the time it entered the intersection.
The Mount Gilead Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol holds primary authority over highway crash investigations in Knox County and is expected to lead the review of Tuesday's collision. It remains unknown whether the surviving occupants' injuries are serious, whether unfamiliarity with U.S. rural traffic controls played any role for the Dutch driver, or whether prosecutors will pursue charges once a crash reconstruction is complete; none of those questions have been addressed in reporting so far.
