Driver Hurt After Flatbed Tow Truck Runs Stop Sign at Munger and Farley Roads and Flees; Bay County Sheriff Seeks Suspect Vehicle

By TruckCrash News Desk · Daily Michigan crash coverage

What Happened

The Bay County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help finding a flatbed tow truck whose driver, deputies say, ran a stop sign at the intersection of E. Munger Road and S. Farley Road, struck an SUV, injured its driver, and drove away, according to reporting by WEYI/NBC 25 (Mid-Michigan NOW).

Deputies said the crash happened Thursday at about 2 p.m. — September 3 — at the rural intersection southeast of Bay City; the sheriff’s office released details of the case on Friday, September 4, as the search for the suspect vehicle continued.

In a statement quoted by the outlet, the sheriff’s office said: “A silver 2023 Chevrolet Traverse was struck by a vehicle that failed to stop at the stop sign. The driver of the Traverse sustained non-life-threatening injuries as a result of the crash. The suspect vehicle is described as a white flatbed tow truck hauling a maroon-colored car.”

The tow truck was last seen heading southbound on S. Farley Road, still carrying the maroon vehicle on its bed. The Traverse driver’s name and age were not released.

Anyone with information about the truck or its driver is asked to call the Bay County Sheriff’s Office at 989-895-4050. A commercial truck hauling a distinctive maroon car in the middle of a Thursday afternoon may well have been noticed — or captured on rural security cameras — along its route.

Reporting: WEYI/NBC 25 (Mid-Michigan NOW), with information from the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

The Investigation: What Happens Next

Hit-and-run investigations involving commercial vehicles often move faster than those involving ordinary cars, because the pool of candidates is smaller: a white flatbed tow truck operating in Bay County at a specific hour is the kind of detail that can be matched against local towing companies, dispatch records, and camera footage from businesses along Farley Road.

Deputies will typically canvass for surveillance video, examine paint transfer and debris left at the scene — which can identify the make of the striking vehicle — and follow up on tips from the public. Leaving the scene of an injury crash is a crime in Michigan, separate from any fault in the underlying collision.

The sheriff’s office had not announced an arrest or identified a suspect as of this report. We will update this story if the vehicle or driver is located.

The Legal Picture

Q1: What happens to an injured driver when the at-fault vehicle flees? This is one place Michigan’s no-fault system does real work: the injured driver’s own policy pays personal injury protection benefits — medical bills, wage loss, replacement services — even if the striking driver is never found. Our explainer on Michigan no-fault insurance covers the details.

Q2: Does it matter that the fleeing vehicle was a tow truck? If the truck was operating commercially, its owner’s commercial policy — and potentially an employer — may come into play once it is identified. Claims involving working commercial vehicles differ from ordinary car claims in important ways, outlined in our guide to hiring a truck accident lawyer.

Q3: Is there coverage for a hit-and-run beyond no-fault benefits? Uninsured motorist coverage, where a driver carries it, is the usual route for injury claims when a hit-and-run driver is never identified — one of several reasons insurers and investigators treat identifying the vehicle as the case’s central task.

Nothing in this section assumes anything about how this particular crash happened or who, if anyone, was at fault. Those questions belong to the investigators working the case.

This Stretch of Road

Munger Road runs east from Bay City through flat, open farm country toward the small community of Munger, crossing a grid of two-lane section roads like Farley on the way. These rural Bay County intersections are typically controlled by stop signs on the minor leg, with through traffic moving at highway speeds — a combination that leaves little margin when a driver blows a stop sign.

Sight lines across the surrounding fields are generally long, but crops in early September can shorten them considerably at the corners, and crash reports from Michigan’s farm-country grids climb through the late-summer and harvest season as truck and equipment traffic increases.

If You Saw This Crash

If you were near E. Munger Road and S. Farley Road on Thursday afternoon and saw a white flatbed tow truck hauling a maroon car — before or after the crash — the Bay County Sheriff’s Office wants to hear from you at 989-895-4050. The truck’s route away from the scene, southbound on Farley, may help narrow where it came from and where it went.

Home and farm security cameras along Munger and Farley roads could hold the key frame in this case. If your camera faces the road, consider checking Thursday’s footage from roughly 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. before it is overwritten.

More on This Crash

• WEYI/NBC 25 (Mid-Michigan NOW): Police looking for suspect vehicle in Bay County hit & run