The dashcam clip is only a few seconds long, but it captures the kind of decision that changes lives forever. On Florida’s Turnpike near Fort Pierce, a semi-truck swung into an illegal U-turn across high-speed traffic, leaving a northbound minivan driver with almost no time or space to react. Three people were killed, and the video has since become a grim case study in how one reckless move in a heavy truck can erase every other driver’s margin for error.
Investigators say the trucker behind the wheel was Harjinder Singh, and the footage from inside his cab shows just how quickly a routine highway run turned into a fatal chain of events. The crash has sparked outrage among families, safety advocates, and other drivers who see it as proof that ignoring basic rules around restricted turnarounds is not just risky, it is lethal.
The seconds before impact
From the driver’s seat of the semi, the road ahead looks ordinary until the moment Singh steers toward a median opening marked for restricted use. The camera inside the cab captures Harjinder Singh beginning the illegal maneuver across the northbound lanes, with the truck’s trailer slowly blocking more of the roadway as oncoming traffic closes in. In the clip, there is no siren, no escort, just a massive rig edging into a space that was never meant for a full U-turn at highway speed, a move later detailed in footage shared from inside the cab.
On the other side of that median opening, a Chrysler Town & Country was heading north in the inside lane, closing the distance at typical Turnpike speeds. According to investigators, the minivan was approaching an area labeled “Official Use Only,” the kind of turnaround meant for law enforcement or maintenance crews, not for a loaded semi trying to reverse course in live traffic. The Chrysler Town & Country had only a sliver of time to respond before it met the trailer broadside at the Official Use Only cut-through.
From traffic stop to homicide charges
What happened next moved the case out of the realm of “tragic accident” and into criminal court. State Troopers in Lucie County responded to the crash on Florida’s Turnpike after the semi’s illegal U-turn left three people dead and the minivan destroyed. In an official account, the agency said that on August 12, troopers arrived to find the semi sprawled across the lanes and the Chrysler Town & Country crushed, a scene that led the Florida Highway Patrol to describe the maneuver as both reckless and criminal in a release from Lucie County.
Harjinder Singh, identified as the semi-truck driver at the center of the crash, was later charged with three counts of vehicular homicide after investigators concluded that his decision to use the restricted turnaround directly caused the deaths. Officials noted that at the time of the crash he was in the United States without legal status, a detail that surfaced when records showed Singh being held following his arrest, as outlined in charging documents that described the three counts.
Dashcams, families, and a wider trucking reckoning
The public did not just hear about this crash, it watched it. Driver-facing dashcam footage circulated widely, showing Singh in the cab as he steered toward the median and began the U-turn, then the violent impact that followed. The clip, shared among truckers and safety advocates, has been used as a stark reminder of how a semi’s blind spots and slow turning radius can turn a bad decision into a catastrophe in seconds, a point underscored in breakdowns of the Driver-facing video.
Another angle from inside the semi shows the view out the windshield as the truck moves into the restricted cut-through, giving a chilling sense of how visible the oncoming Chrysler Town & Country was before the collision. That interior perspective, captured in the cab of Harjinder Singh’s semi, has been cited by investigators and lawyers who argue that the danger of blocking high-speed lanes with a slow U-turn should have been obvious, a point reinforced by footage shared from inside the semi.
For the families of those killed, the video is not just evidence, it is a replay of their worst day. A social media post describes how one victim died at the scene while his two passengers, 37-year-old Faniola Joseph and 54-year-old relatives, were also lost, and notes that the clip has been viewed at least 138 times on that account alone as they push for accountability.
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