3/27: Car crush

It's a bit late to be newsworthy - from last week's crash in northern Atlanta, where about 50 cars piled up. But when you're shipping an image a day and there's a backlog, sometimes things have to wait. This car, I think, got the worst of it - sandwiched between two semis or lorries or tractor-trailers or whatever your local culture calls them.

There's 6 inches separating the two trucks, but remarkably, there is some passenger compartment left. Amazing how crash protection has come such a long way.

Do we know if the person(s) in this car survived? I would doubt it but you never know.

I would imagine whoever was in there got out of it with just a few minor scratches and a smashed head...

Not to be picky, but I heard it was something like 120 cars. Am I mistaken?

Having lived in the south most of my life I can add an explanation here. Much of the country side around Atlanta is rolling hills with large rivers, such as the Chatahoochee, snaking through it. Fog forms on the water (warm fronts push over cold water) and from one hill to the next you can go from a clear view to a split pea soup. Seems crazy that 50-100 cars could pile up but Georgia drivers are notorious for speeding and once into the fog, it's too late to slow down. These conditions are typical in several southern states.

Some details...

oh man

We used to (actually still do) get a kind of fog in central cali called "tule fog". It's formed by temperature inversions during cold weather, and is no joke. We get the same chain-reaction, both-sides-of-the-freeway crashes along route 99 and I-5 all the time. The visibility goes to nothing at all in no time at all and you're pretty much done.

I got into that stuff one night and made it through, but swore that I would never do it again, that I'd just pull off and camp instead.

Yah, me too. Something I didn't notice before -- it looks like they've built up a tower of pallets to keep the truck on the left from further crushing the car downwards. So somebody was probably cut out of that car, which seems quite promising.

Good point UT, I saw that too. And on a second look I just noticed you can see the back of head rests for the front seats and the roof looks like it was cut off. The truck in front of the car looks like one of those trailers they use in racing to transport their vehicles and it has 'moto' written on the side. Moto as we all know is french for motorcycle. If I really wanted to know if the car driver survived, I could call up the the number on the of side of the trailer, pretend to be a newsie, and ask about the accident.

I have been through this kind of fog too but never as thick. There is one spot down the road where the road dips down by a stream and at night it seems there is always fog there.