A tractor-trailer driver from Miami was killed at 12:39 a.m. Friday, September 25, when his rig veered off Interstate 84 in the Town of Greenville, launched off an overpass and landed upside down on the road beneath it. Alexander Vazquez-Martinez, 54, was pronounced dead at the scene after the crash near Exit 4 in rural Orange County.
New York State Police say the 2023 Peterbilt tractor-trailer was traveling east on Interstate 84 at 12:39 a.m. Friday when it veered off the highway for reasons that remain unknown, according to Newport Dispatch. The vehicle left the interstate at the point where it crosses over Eatontown Road, became airborne, and came down upside down on the roadway below the overpass. Vazquez-Martinez was the truck's sole occupant.
Crews needed to extricate Vazquez-Martinez from the wreckage before he was pronounced dead at the scene, per the same account. The Greenville Town Fire Department assisted state police in the response. Anyone with information can call the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Greenville at (845) 344-5300.
A Rural Town Along I-84
The Town of Greenville is a rural municipality of 4,689 residents spread across 30.5 square miles along the New Jersey state line, and it has no incorporated villages, according to Wikipedia.
Interstate 84 runs 71.46 miles across New York from Port Jervis at the Pennsylvania line to the Connecticut border. It is the only east-west interstate freeway across the state between New York City and the Capital District.
Orange County's Outsized Share of Truck Crashes
Friday's fatal crash fits a troubling pattern in the region. Orange County led the Mid-Hudson Valley in heavy commercial vehicle accidents in 2024, recording 670 large-truck crashes, six fatalities and 104 injuries, which accounted for 53 percent of all truck crashes across Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties combined, according to data compiled by the law firm Mainetti & Mainetti. Heavy freight traffic converges on the county at the intersection of Interstates 84 and 87, driving those elevated crash numbers.
The toll extends well beyond Orange County. Nationwide, 5,340 people died in large-truck crashes in 2024, a 2.5 percent decrease from the prior year but a 30 percent increase over the past decade, per the National Safety Council. Occupants of other vehicles make up 70 percent of large-truck crash fatalities nationally, while truck occupants like Vazquez-Martinez account for 17 percent.
Emergency Access Concerns Along I-84
Severe crashes on this rural stretch of highway have previously exposed gaps in emergency response times. In December 2023, the Federal Highway Administration approved a long-delayed New York State plan to build an emergency-access crash gate along Interstate 84 in Orange County, intended to shorten first-responder access after frequent severe crashes on rural stretches of the highway, as reported by Newsday. The gate could reduce typical emergency response times from 12 minutes to two minutes.
Friday's fatal crash comes just three weeks after another deadly tractor-trailer wreck on the same interstate corridor. On September 2, a 42-year-old truck driver was killed when his rig struck a parked semi-truck near the New York-Connecticut state line, a crash that also shut down I-84 for hours and damaged highway infrastructure, Hoodline previously reported. The cause of Friday's crash in Greenville remains under investigation, and State Police have not said what led the Peterbilt to leave the roadway.
