100 cars involved in Autobahn Pile Up

OSI

Just saw this on the BBC site...

More than 60 people were injured in a motorway crash involving more than 100 cars in Germany. The accident happened on the A2 autobahn between Hanover and Peine.
German motorway police said 10 people suffered life-threatening injuries and 21 others were seriously injured in a series of accidents which are believed to have been caused by a combination of excessive speed and heavy rain.

100 cars involved in one crash! That'd certainly add a bit of time to the morning commute...

celticbest

Make that 259 cars,

Dozens injured in 259-car autobahn pileup

Dozens of people were injured in a pileup involving 259 cars on the A2 motorway in the state of Lower Saxony late on Sunday, police reported. Ten of the injured are in critical condition.

Police from Braunschweig, near where the accidents occurred, said it was the largest series of collisions ever seen in the area. In total, 66 people were injured when several drivers lost control of their vehicles due to heavy rain. The first collision – which began a two-hour-long series of resulting accidents on a 30-kilometre stretch of road – was reported near Hämelerwald towards Hannover.

Many drivers were driving too quickly and closely for the weather conditions, police said. The low-lying sun also hindered vision, a Braunschweig state patrol spokesperson said.

The A2 motorway was closed for clean up at several locations, causing traffic jams several kilometres long as clean up crews worked into the morning. Some 340 rescue workers were involved in the efforts.

“We have to put together all of the data on the injured people and towed cars. This will take until midday at least,” an investigator said.

Authorities estimate the costs of the pile up will be at least €1.5 million

unkel

It wasn't one crash but a whole series of crashes on a 30km stretch of autobahn. The cause was heavy rain followed by (late evening) low sunlight combined with inadequate distance keeping and driving too fast. 259 cars were involved, no deaths yet - which is pretty amazing.

Edit: I'm not the fastest typer

ToxicPaddy

A short video of the aftermath here...

Linky

Looks fairly frightening.. Surprised no one was killed..

Tox

Big Nasty

All this talk of poor driving skills in our fair land and how good they are at it in other countries......

....and then i read this: :eek::eek:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1200951/Massive-German-motorway-pile-involving-259-cars-leaves-60-injured.html?ITO=1490

Alun

You can get some really sudden cloudbursts of truly biblical proportions on the European mainland in the summer months that would make the rainiest day in Ireland look like a mere bit of drizzle. I've been in traffic on the autobahns that had to actually come to a full stop on occasions, you quite literally couldn't see the end of your car's bonnet. Then drive another km down the road and the road surface is literally as dry as a bone.

That's not excusing what happened, and maybe there were people driving too fast or too close to each other, but I just wanted to mention that 'heavy rain' in this context could have been something quite sudden and dramatic.

Berty

In France the motorway speed limit is 130kph but when its raining you must drive at 110kph. The sign does not really explain what benchmark you must use for rain.

Drops on your windscreen or a torrent?

Similar in Germany on the Autobahn?

Johnboy Mac

MCMLXXV wrote: »

All this talk of poor driving skills in our fair land and how good they are at it in other countries......

....and then i read this: :eek::eek:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1200951/Massive-German-motorway-pile-involving-259-cars-leaves-60-injured.html?ITO=1490

It should be kept in perspective i.e. high volume of traffic per km and high average speed and of course the weather. Also it was several accidents not just one single pile up. Sounds like sudden freak weather change.

Eoin

threads merged

deceit

I'm in Germany at the moment and before this trip (been about 20 times in last four years) I had great respect for germans driving abilities but after seeing what they are like this time (being warm weather) think they are worse than irish when it gets warm, Bordering psychotic. One example, i'm travelling 100km on a back road with a max speed of 100km, one person over takes me at about 140 with on coming traffic (thinking to myself thats pretty dangerous, then all of a sudden a car doing about 180 over takes me and before the other car has even finished his overtaking passes him and was about 2-3meters from hitting oncoming traffic. I see the car at a set of lights a few km ahead and is nice and relaxed. I taught must have been some emergency to drive like such a lunatic. About 50 things like that have happened since i've been here and only here 1 week so far and on the autobahn this time alot people are leaving about 2 meters in between them and the car in front going more than 120. Germans are good drivers with normal weather but once its warm they are lunatics :P.
I drove in torrential rain last year going between hamburg and colgne and everyone drove perfectly.

Alun

Johnboy Mac wrote: »

It should be kept in perspective i.e. high volume of traffic per km and high average speed and of course the weather. Also it was several accidents not just one single pile up. Sounds like sudden freak weather change.

That's the point I was trying to make in my post. I've seen it many times in Germany where quite literally you go from bone dry to torrential downpour in a very short time with little or no warning. They're quite common all over central Europe in hot weather and are usually sudden, and very localised thunderstorms that have been brewing for days rather than the continuously damp and wet conditions we're used to on the edge of the Atlantic.

I found that if weather conditions were just "ordinary rain" then people generally slowed down accordingly.