Two highway accidents cause gridlock traffic

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

Two ac­ci­dents mo­ments apart along the east­bound lane of the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way (CRH) in San Juan, yes­ter­day caused a ma­jor traf­fic night­mare for mo­torists.

The ac­ci­dents left about 15 peo­ple in­jured, though no se­ri­ous in­juries were re­port­ed.

The ac­ci­dents caused an ini­tial grid­lock that stretched for near­ly half a mile dur­ing the peak hour (6.30 am to 7.30 am).

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter­wards, TTPS Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor Brent Bat­son said the ac­ci­dents were record­ed along the east­bound lane with­in a short pe­ri­od.

Ac­cord­ing to Bat­son, the first ac­ci­dent oc­curred just be­fore peak hour and in­volved eight ve­hi­cles, af­ter a ve­hi­cle al­leged­ly lost con­trol and came to a sud­den stop, trig­ger­ing a chain-re­ac­tion col­li­sion in­volv­ing sev­er­al oth­ers.

A sec­ond ac­ci­dent oc­curred short­ly af­ter­wards and in­volved four ve­hi­cles, Bat­son said.

“No­body was se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, thank good­ness,” Bat­son said.

He added that those hurt in the ac­ci­dents sus­tained mi­nor to mod­er­ate in­juries, in­clud­ing lac­er­a­tions, neck in­juries and back in­juries.

How­ev­er, he warned that the in­ci­dents once again high­light­ed poor dri­ving prac­tices, par­tic­u­lar­ly mo­torists not main­tain­ing a safe dis­tance from the ve­hi­cle in front of them.

Bat­son stressed the im­por­tance of de­fen­sive dri­ving, re­mind­ing mo­torists that the best prac­tice is to main­tain at least a three-sec­ond fol­low­ing dis­tance be­hind the ve­hi­cle ahead.

He al­so point­ed to ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tions, which rec­om­mend one ve­hi­cle length for every 15 kilo­me­tres per hour of speed.

“Speed and no stop­ping dis­tance would be a big mis­take,” Bat­son cau­tioned.

He al­so ap­pealed to the pub­lic—es­pe­cial­ly mo­torists trav­el­ling dur­ing peak hours—to re­main alert, re­duce speed and pay close at­ten­tion to fol­low­ing dis­tance, not­ing that prop­er spac­ing can sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the risk of mul­ti-ve­hi­cle col­li­sions.