Excerpt from the article is below. Emphasis IN CAPS is mine.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California Highway Patrol faulted a semi-truck driver Friday for a fiery head-on collision with a bus that killed 10, but officials said THEY STILL DON'T KNOW WHY his big rig veered across an interstate median and into oncoming traffic, killing five high school students on their way to visit a college and a couple who had just gotten engaged.
The underlying cause of the crash is the FedEx semi-truck driver, Tim Evans, 32, "allowing his vehicle to travel across the median in an unsafe turning movement," Sgt. Nathan Parsons said. "He could have fell asleep, he could have had an undiagnosed medical condition. WE'RE UNABLE TO PROVE EITHER."
It makes no sense to me that when the police themselves say they don't know why and cannot prove how the truck came to cross the median, they still find the driver to be at fault. If they don't know why or how, they cannot logically conclude that the driver "allowed" the vehicle to do anything. For all they know, he may have been doing everything in his power to prevent the vehicle from leaving the road. Or he may have been powerless to do anything because he was unconscious or dead before the vehicle left the road. That said, FedEx is likely on the liability hook for this since the company is responsible for the truck and driver and, clearly, the truck was in the wrong place.
It just seems fundamentally unfair to the driver for the police to blame him without proof. They are doing it by speculating that the accident was his fault but speculation is not proof and that is not fair. Why could they not have simply said that the cause is unknown (which they did) and left it to others to argue about fault and liability (which they did not do)?