An overturned semi-truck early on Thursday morning was only the latest crash in a southern Indiana construction zone that has been swallowing trucks for a month: Indiana State Police say troopers have worked roughly 30 crashes since the start of October inside the narrowed I-65 widening project near Henryville in Clark County, between mile markers 14.5 and 25.5, WDRB and WAVE reported.

Indiana State Police Sgt. Carey Huls was preparing to work a shift in the middle of the ongoing widening project near Henryville early Thursday when the radio brought the day's first bad news. "A reckless driver report, a silver cab with a white trailer all over the roadway," Huls said. "Before, within two to three minutes of that, we got a call that it had overturned."

WHAS11 and WLKY reported that the overturned semi shut I-65 in both directions near Henryville, with a hazmat situation reported at the scene, and that the interstate reopened only after a closure of about six hours — the pattern drivers on this corridor now know well: once a truck goes over in the narrowed lanes, there is no quick way around it.

Huls said it can take ISP and wrecker crews hours to safely get a truck upright while the Indiana Department of Transportation project continues around them. It was the same, he said, with a nasty accident involving another semi-truck two days before the Thursday crash.

Speed is not the main suspect — fatigue and lanes are

With most of the recent crashes, Huls said, ISP does not think speed played a factor. Thursday's driver, he said, was in the wrong lane for semis, and should have reconsidered being on the road in that moment. "He drives that same route every day," Huls said. "He was definitely familiar with the situation and nothing had changed, yet he fell asleep at the wrong location."

That combination — narrowed lanes with little room for error, lane rules that differ for trucks, and tired drivers on a familiar route — is what troopers say keeps repeating inside the zone. The early ISP data Huls cited is a rough count, not a final statistic, but it averages out to about a crash a day since October began.

Why this stretch matters far beyond Clark County

Interstate 65 is one of the main north–south freight corridors of the US Midwest, linking Louisville, Kentucky, with Indianapolis and, beyond it, Chicago. Thousands of drivers use the Clark County stretch every day, WDRB noted, and a large share of the long-haul trucks on it are driven by professional drivers — including many Punjabi truckers, for whom I-65 is a regular route between the Midwest, the South and Canada-bound freight lanes. A six-hour closure here does not just delay local commuters; it cascades into delivery schedules across several states.

The project behind the barrels

The crashes are happening inside an Indiana Department of Transportation widening project. INDOT said the second phase of the work should wrap up in November, but there is more to do on the corridor through 2028. "The overall goal and end benefit is to provide the motoring public with an added travel lane and pavement reconstruction along a heavily utilized segment of I-65 to improve traffic flow, reduce congestion, and improve safety along the corridor," an INDOT spokesperson said, adding that the project is also designed to meet future transportation needs.

What happens next

Until the second phase wraps up this month — and through the further work planned to 2028 — the narrowed configuration stays, and with it the risk that one more overturned truck closes the interstate for hours. ISP has given no indication of extra enforcement or a change to the zone's layout; for now, the advice to drivers crossing southern Indiana is to plan for sudden closures between mile markers 14.5 and 25.5, especially in the early-morning hours when both of this week's semi crashes happened.