Three weeks after a Waste Management garbage truck slammed into the support pillars of a U.S. 287 overpass in Fort Worth, killing its driver, federal investigators are still trying to determine what went wrong. The crash tore into the bridge over Erath Street so badly that crews had to demolish part of the structure, and the cause remains unresolved.
The driver, 33-year-old Tyler Bradley Shivers, died at the scene after the truck exited the highway and struck several of the overpass's supporting pillars, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The outlet reported that Shivers was thrown from the vehicle and was later identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office. His passenger, identified as Ruben Saenz, was injured and taken to a hospital in critical condition, police told the paper. Fort Worth police said they responded to the crash around 6 p.m. on Sept. 23 in the 3500 block of Martin Luther King Freeway.
Witnesses Described the Truck Drifting Before Impact
Bystanders who saw the crash unfold told NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth that the Waste Management truck began drifting between lanes before it hit a slope and then slammed into the support beam. The station reported that evaluating the damage to the overpass was expected to take at least a week, a timeline that hinted early on at how serious the structural toll would be.
Fort Worth police had warned the public that the closures would stretch on. In a post on X three weeks before this report, the department cautioned that all main lanes of Highway 287 at Erath Street would remain closed for a minimum of seven to 10 days while the overpass damage was evaluated.
Half the Bridge Came Down During Repairs
The damage ultimately proved extensive enough that crews demolished half of the bridge over Erath Street as part of the repair effort, according to CBS News Texas. Despite the scale of that work, all lanes of U.S. 287 at Erath Street reopened on Sept. 25, just two days after the crash, per the Star-Telegram's reporting.
CBS News Texas, in a report published Friday, noted the cause of the crash remains under investigation. That uncertainty has persisted even as traffic has returned to normal.
Federal Safety Board Now Involved
Beyond local police, the National Transportation Safety Board has opened its own safety investigation into the crash in coordination with the Fort Worth Police Department, the same NBC 5 report noted. No findings from that review have been made public, and the exact sequence of events leading up to the impact is still being pieced together by investigators.
Garbage trucks striking overpasses and bridges is not an entirely novel hazard for engineers who study infrastructure safety. The Federal Highway Administration has documented at least one case of steel truss damage caused by a garbage truck impact in its case-study materials on bridge preservation, while the National Academies has published guidance specifically addressing the prevention and mitigation of bridge and tunnel strikes. Neither resource is tied to the Fort Worth crash, but both reflect a recognized category of structural risk that transportation agencies continue to study.
For now, the overpass at Erath Street is carrying traffic again, but the investigation into the cause of the fatal crash, which left a bridge partially demolished, continues.
