At approximately 11:30 a.m. on January 18, 2007, Mr. Hardip Sangha
(Sangha) lost control of a tractor trailer he was driving north on Highway 97
at an S turn in the highway, near Sales Road, about 20 km south of Quesnel.
He felt his vehicle slide across the road as the trailer swung around the
tractor. As this occurred, Mr. Raoul Thiels (Thiels) was approaching the
same location driving a tractor trailer south, toward Williams Lake. When he
saw the Sangha truck sliding sideways across the road into his path of travel,
he felt that there was no option but to intentionally drive his truck off the
west side of the road into a ditch and snowbank. The vehicles missed each other
narrowly. Sanghas truck swung around 180 degrees and ended in the ditch on the
east side of Highway 97 with the tractor facing south. Thiels truck hit the
bank of the ditch on the west side of the road and its trailer then pivoted
across the travelled portion of the highway, blocking the southbound lane
entirely and impinging significantly on the northbound lane....