11/11/08 Deschutes County
By: Brian MacMillan
 
Just after 5:30 p.m. on HWY 20, truck driver Kelly Crawford got the scare of his life.
 
"I was going down my lane and this car swerved over and hit me in my front, scraped around, and i went up and over him with the rear axles of my trailer," says Crawford.
 
The truck came to a stop 100 feet past the initial collision.  The SUV rests up against the guard rail near milepost 19.  The driver's legs are crushed by the accident.  Crawford says he got out of his truck and rushed to help.  "He was sort of, semi-conscious. We had other drivers that stopped and helped him out a lot," he says.
 
Emergency crews were dispatched.  An Air-Link helicopter transports the man to Saint Charles Medical Center in Bend.  After an hour, the SUV and the semi-truck are towed away.  Police are still investigating the cause of the accident.  "I think he fell asleep, because he came straight over," says Crawford.
The highway was closed for about an hour and a half while, state troopers and ODOT cleaned up the mess.  Frustrated travelers had to wait, like Mark Schrader and his wife, on their way to Las Vegas.  "This was supposed to be the fast way to get there, but it's not so fast now, because someone else was obviously in a hurry and it messed us up," he says.