Cops Blame Speed, Not Weather For Chain Reaction Crashes That Closed Highway 400 For Hours

You might have expected it during the height of Sunday’s storm. But it was likely the last thing you would have thought would happen the day after much of the snow had been cleared away. But cops knew it was possible and their worst fears were realized after at least 25 vehicles became involved in six separate accidents on Highway 400 at Highway 89 around the noon hour Monday.

One crash followed another, as the motorists going too fast assumed driving conditions had returned to normal. They were wrong.

It began when a driver lost control of his vehicle and those behind him couldn’t stop in time. “We had a lot of folks going way too fast,” explains OPP Sgt. Cam Woolley. “Somebody lost control, collided. We had some other vehicles, blocked lanes. People had to stop because of that, and a few hundred metres north of it, somebody couldn’t get stopped because they were going too fast, caused another set of crashes. Then about a kilometre after that, a much bigger crash. Same thing. People not being able to stop, and just because it was sunny doesn’t mean you can go fast.”

Jane Banks was in one of the vehicles that wound up being hit. “The car came over the knoll of the hill and rear-ended me and pushed me into the back of another vehicle,” she remembers. “Next thing I know I’m looking at the ceiling and the air bags had deployed.”

And one car wound up under a tanker truck that was carrying citric acid. The veteran trucker says he sees this kind of thing all the time after a big dumping of snow. “There’s more accidents after the storm than during the storm, because people start going too fast again,” Allan Foster relates.

“What was happening with this chain reaction accident, people were stopping and then the vehicles coming from behind would hit the side of the vehicle, push it up into the vehicle in front of it,” explains OPP Cst. Dave Woodford.

Cops agree it’s the calm after the storm that’s worse than anything that happens while it’s still underway. But try as they might, they weren’t able to get that message out. “Just because it’s sunny out doesn’t mean you can go fast, ’cause you sure as heck can’t stop fast when the roads are wet or damp,” complains Woolley.

In the end, three people were taken to hospital but everyone involved in this precarious pile-up suffered only minor injuries. Rick Parry was more worried about his spilled coffee than his bruised ribs. “(Bleep) drinking my Timmy’s and it spilt all over the place,” he gripes.

The highway was closed off for several hours, but finally reopened at the tail end of rush hour.