Bizarre Moment When Over 280 Vehicles Piled on Top of Each Other on Bridge in One of the World's Biggest Car Crashes
“This is too scary, I don’t think we can get off the bridge.”
A massive pileup of over 200 vehicles on a bridge has cost one driver their life and resulted in many injuries. The incident happened on the Zhengxin Huanghe bridge in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, with heavy fog and poor visibility being to blame. Images shared by people involved show cars jack-knifed and drivers wandering around cars with smoke coming out of them. Here's what happened and how so many cars were involved in the pileup.
Images from the crash are horrifying—cars are literally piled on top of each other, and many of them are severely dented and smashed up. The incident happened at around 7.40 am on December 27, and Zhengzhou traffic police say 280-290 vehicles were involved.
Dashcam footage indicates extremely poor visibility was to blame for the pileup. Motorists are seen standing by the side of the road, trying to warn oncoming traffic of the accident. "This is too scary. Full of people here, I don't think we can get off the bridge," one motorist says in a video clip.
11 fire trucks and 66 firefighters responded to the disaster, and injured people were taken to local hospitals. Many of the injured had been trapped in their cars before emergency services turned up to rescue them. At least one person died, authorities say.
Traffic on both sides of the bridge was halted during the rescue operation, but the northbound lane was open again by 3 pm when the fog cleared. Cars and debris were still being moved out of the southbound lane at the time.
Local police closed down several other highways due to the fog. According to Henan's weather service, certain areas were experiencing visibility below 650 feet on Wednesday morning. Zhengzhou authorities advise people to use alternate routes as they don't know when regular traffic will resume.
