Two residents of Harvey, North Dakota — a 66-year-old woman driving and a 28-year-old man riding with her — were killed on Tuesday, November 3, when their minivan pulled forward from a stop at the junction of North Dakota Highway 3 and U.S. Highway 52 in Harvey and was struck by a westbound Mack truck, the North Dakota Highway Patrol said in a news release reported by the Jamestown Sun. The crash, at about 5:07 p.m. in Wells County, closed U.S. Highway 52 for about five hours, and the national trucking publication The Trucker carried the patrol's account on Friday, November 6, as the investigation continued.

Source: Jamestown Sun (North Dakota Highway Patrol release)

According to the Highway Patrol, the 2020 Dodge Caravan was stopped at the intersection of N.D. Highway 3 and U.S. Highway 52 in Harvey. The patrol said the Dodge then proceeded forward at the intersection and failed to yield to the Mack truck — a 2020 Mack driven westbound on Highway 3 by a 40-year-old man. The Mack struck the Dodge in what the patrol described as a two-vehicle T-bone crash.

The driver of the Caravan and her passenger were pronounced dead at the scene. Both were wearing seat belts, the patrol said. The driver of the Mack truck, who was also wearing a seat belt, was not injured. The patrol has not released the names of the two people who died in the reports published so far, identifying them only as Harvey residents, and Awaaz Punjab is following that practice until the patrol's formal identification is published.

What the patrol's account says — and what it leaves open

The patrol's narrative is short and specific: a stopped minivan, a decision to proceed, a failure to yield, and a heavy truck that could not avoid it. Yet the same release says charges are under investigation for the Mack truck driver — a line the patrol includes while it completes its reconstruction of the crash. That means the investigation is not finished: troopers are still working through the evidence from the junction before any charging decision is made, and the release's failure-to-yield finding about the Caravan and the open charges question about the truck driver sit side by side until that work is done. No speed estimate, alcohol finding or mechanical finding has been published for either vehicle.

Source: The Trucker (North Dakota Highway Patrol release)

The junction: where Highway 3 meets U.S. 52 in Harvey

Harvey is a small city in Wells County in central North Dakota, and the junction sits where two of the region's working highways cross. U.S. Highway 52 runs diagonally across North Dakota, carrying farm and freight traffic between the Minot area in the northwest and Jamestown and Interstate 94 in the southeast. North Dakota Highway 3 is one of the state's long north–south routes. At 5:07 p.m. on a November evening — days after the clocks went back — it is already dark or close to it on the northern plains, and two-lane rural junctions like this one depend entirely on a stopped driver judging the speed and distance of an approaching truck correctly before pulling out.

Why a stopped car's mistake is unforgiving in front of a loaded truck

The physics in the patrol's account are the ones every commercial driver knows: a loaded Mack truck travelling at highway speed cannot brake or swerve the way a car can, and a T-bone impact puts the striking vehicle's mass directly into the side of the smaller vehicle, where there is the least structure to absorb it. The patrol said both people in the Caravan were wearing seat belts and were still killed at the scene, which underlines how severe a side impact from a commercial truck at a rural junction can be. For the Punjabi and other truck drivers who run U.S. 52 and the other two-lane corridors of the northern plains — grain, energy and freight routes with long distances between towns — this is the recurring nightmare scenario: a vehicle pulling out from a stop with too little gap, and no room and no time to answer it.

The five-hour closure, and the traffic that went through Harvey

U.S. Highway 52 was closed for approximately five hours after the crash while troopers investigated and the scene was cleared, and traffic was routed through Harvey, The Trucker reported. On a corridor with few parallel alternatives, a five-hour closure in the evening pushes through-traffic — including trucks — onto local streets and county roads, and it is one of the practical reasons a single rural junction crash draws a full Highway Patrol response.

What happens next

The crash remains under investigation by the North Dakota Highway Patrol, which will decide, with prosecutors, whether the open question of charges for the truck driver leads anywhere; the patrol's reconstruction and any formal identification of the two Harvey residents are the next expected releases. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the patrol publishes them. No funeral information had been released in the reports available at publication time.