Allow me to introduce the Frito-Lay chip truck meets Bud Light, King of Beers tractor-trailer. This might have been a great encounter under different circumstances. It could have been a rockin’ street party. But when these two trucks met, the impact ripped the side of the beer truck opens sending cases of brewskies to waste.
On top of that, bags of crushed chips littered the street. Nothing was salvageable. That’s one way to crash a party! It was three o’clock one morning when the chip truck was having trouble and pulled to the emergency lane. The semi-truck, barreling down the slow lane and swerving to avoid another traffic hindrance, laid into chip truck, and that’s how they met.
The Pavement of Chocolate!
It looks like a scene out of Willy Wonka's world but actually it is the A2 highway in Poland coated with 12 tons of chocolate. The cleanup was complicated. The chocolate, in the cool late spring morning, hardened before it could be washed away. All six lanes of the Slupca highway in Western Poland were drenched in this liquid goodness.
The fire crew was called in and said it was more difficult than snow to remove once it hardened and trickier to clean up than an oil spill. The crews had to find hot water to spray on the enormous road-sized chocolate bar to melt it away and wash it into the gutters.
Corn Dogs
In March of 2014, citizens of Shreveport, Louisiana were delivered a special surprise. A California-bound semi was heading through New Orleans to California when the driver flipped the truck and crashed onto the guard rail. This unfortunate happened in the late hours of the night spilling 75,000 corn dogs across the freeway. Plenty of the frozen food favorites were still strewn in the morning hours when passersby grabbed them up by the armloads.
One thing is true, this corny incident was crazy. On the other hand, commuters were taxed with delays and detours lasting 9 hours. The route was closed down for 11 hours. The driver was not injured, and he wasn't even charged with any violations.
Cookie Dough Accident
"Such a waste of cookie dough!" That's how one Facebook user put it responding to a posting by Pender EMS & Fire, Inc. that said to "expect delays and keep an eye out for clean up crews if you happen to be heading south on Highway 17 through Scotts Hill in the area of Sidbury Road."
This tragedy of cookie lovers everywhere happened in North Carolina without a collision. The truck came to a halt at a red light. When the light turned green and it took off, the backdoor flew open and 20 large wheeled carts rolled out, dumping gallons of its decadent contents into the street. It was a sad week for sweets as the massive chocolate spill in Poland went down just days earlier.
One Potato, Two Potato
Forty-thousand pounds of potatoes more inundated the outer loop of Interstate 495 on an early June morning in 2015. Containers of spuds that will never be mashed, baked, sautéed, or French-fried poured out of the wayward tractor-trailer into the ditch and onto the road.
The truck, carrying 43,000 pounds of potatoes, veered into the divide around 3 a.m. and spilled its load. The driver who had fallen asleep was rushed to the hospital with a broken arm. Wet weather made early morning traffic in D.C. a disaster. In all, three crashes tied up the beltway.