Motorway crash sees tractor thrown from lorry across road in France

An accident on one of France’s busiest motorways caused hours of disruption yesterday (August 23) after tractors were ejected onto the road from the transporter lorry carrying them.

One tractor was even thrown across the central reservation onto the other side of the road.

Traffic was brought to a halt at around 12:15 on the motorway after the transporter lorry crashed into the central reservation following a minor bump with a commercial vehicle between Tain-L’Hermitage et Bourg-lès-Valence (Drôme).

Despite the nature of the incident only four people were hurt, suffering minor injuries according to the emergency services.

The lorry, which was heading in the direction of Marseille, veered into the middle of the motorway having bumped into a smaller commercial vehicle.

The tractors the lorry was carrying were then thrown off the vehicle, with one ending up on the other side of the central reservation.

Around 30 workers from the emergency services attended the scene. Traffic passed via one lane during the disruption, causing traffic jams to form for many kilometres.

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Four hours later, at 16:20, the traffic was still heavily disrupted as the emergency services worked to clear the road.

Writing on Twitter one user said: “I had to do a 60km detour to avoid the traffic jams lasting 1h30 minutes, I’d had enough of the heat and the fatigue”.

As time went on, more lanes opened to allow traffic to pass through but delays persisted for much of the afternoon.

The accident took five hours to be completely cleared with traffic continuing to build up during the afternoon.

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