Earlier this week a massive 69 vehicle pileup in Virginia brought back awful memories of the horrific 2011 crash in the UAE where one person died and more than 60 people were injured following a 127 car crash.
###
That accident, which happened on April 2 between Sahama and Ghantoot on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway, was the result of motorists speeding in extremely foggy conditions where visibility was limited to less than 50 metres.
###
The scene of the accident stretched two kilometres long, and according to police most of the vehicles were speeding at 120kph – despite extremely poor conditions severely restricting visibility.
###
The Virginia accident occurred on December 22 at the Queen’s Creek Bridge which left scores of people with injuries, believed to be as many 51 – but according to authorities they have since been released from hospital.
###
Local police reported that the bridge was icy and that fog had impeded vision. Dozens of cars were smashed and several were left in precarious positions on the edges of the bridge – which are to be demolished and replaced with newer, wider bridges – but fortunately nobody was killed.
###
The 2011 UAE pileup was not the first of this magnitude – over a decade ago in March 2008, five people were killed and more than 350 injured in a huge 60 vehicle pileup on the Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway near Ghantoot, also because of dense fog.
###