A massive pileup involving more than 50 vehicles on Friday resulted in two fatalities and 26 injuries, five of them serious, on an expressway in Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, according to police.
The pileup occurred on the outbound lane of the Kan-etsu Expressway in Minakami at around 7:30 p.m. after vehicles likely skidded on the icy surface as snow fell, according to the police. At least 10 vehicles caught fire, taking more than seven hours to extinguish, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
The accident started as a truck crashed into another truck that was stopped on the road after a single-vehicle accident, leading to a chain of collisions over about 300 meters.
A 77-year-old woman from Tokyo, who was in the rear seat of a car driven by her family, died, while a body was found in the driver’s seat of a large truck. Twenty-one people suffered minor injuries.
A section of the expressway was subsequently closed, with a row of badly damaged vehicles, some charred beyond recognition, clogging the outbound lane.
At that time, drivers had been instructed to slow to 50 kilometers per hour due to snow.
A driver in his 60s said his truck hit the median after swerving to avoid a car ahead of him. He also heard the sound of explosions four times behind him.
“The ice made it difficult for me to control the steering wheel,” he said. “I feared for my life.”
News.Az
AloJapan.com