Put Down the Cell Phone and Drive

Yes, it was the darkness before dawn when human brains are at their weakest, and yes, it was one of those three-lanes-to-two-lanes deadly funnels the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is so fond of.

But now we discover another likely cause of the monster wreck that killed the trucker and 10 members of a Mennonite family on their way to a wedding in Iowa.

The Alabama truck driver who slammed into a van on March 26 on Interstate 65 near Munfordville, Ky., killing 10 people and himself, was talking on a cell phone and may have been speeding, according to a state police accident report.

The report, obtained this week by The Courier-Journal through an open-records request, says the truck's driver, Kenneth E. Laymon, was distracted and did not have his tractor-trailer under control when it crossed the median and rammed a van carrying Mennonites traveling to an Iowa wedding.

The report says another truck driver who witnessed the wreck estimated Laymon was traveling at 80 mph.

Killed in the van were John Esh, 64, owner of a vinyl-building business in Marrowbone, Ky., and his 62-year-old wife, Sadie Esh; their daughters, Rose, 40, Anna, 33, and Rachel, 20; their son, Leroy, 41, and his wife, Naomi, 33, and that couple's adopted infant son, Jalen. Also killed were Joel Gingerich, 22, Rachel's fiancé, and Ashlie Kramer, 22, an Esh family friend.

The only survivors of the crash, which is under federal investigation, were two adopted sons of Leroy and Naomi Esh — Josiah, 5, and Johnny, 3, who are being cared for by their maternal grandparents.

SNIP

Investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration are pending. State police said a more detailed reconstruction of the accident will be released later when its death investigation is completed.

Read the whole thing.