Results tagged “trafficaccident”

Yesterday afternoon, eight vehicles were involved in a fatal crash on the NJ Turnpike that "prompted police to shut down a 25-mile southbound stretch of the highway for hours," the Star-Ledger reports. Apparently a tractor-trailer hit a Buick, which had stopped in the right (southbound) lane: "The impact caused the 2004 Buick LeSabre to become fully engulfed in flames and shift to the center lane, where it triggered a chain reaction involving six other vehicles." The Buick's driver and passengers, five people in their 70s, were all killed. One of the other cars was a Jeep containing three men from NYC, all of whom were injured; charges against the tractor-trailer driver are pending. The highway's hours-long closure hit travelers heading to the Jersey shore and Six Flags Great Adventure. NJ Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando told the Star-Ledger, "I don't really remember one this bad...Now it's just a matter of trying to figure out what happened down there."

Traffic on the Whitestone Bridge is back running smoothly after an accident yesterday shut it down for most of the afternoon when an overhead sign collapsed and blocked all five lanes of traffic in both directions. The sign and its metal support system, the gantry, came down around 1 p.m. when an MTA Bridges and Tunnels contractor struck it with their truck and the crane attached to its back.