The change of the season can create serious challenges for Nashville drivers. Today dense fog caused a massive pileup near Nashville involving 50 cars. As many as 179 vehicles stopped because of the crashes on Vietnam Veterans Parkway in Hendersonville.
"I would compare it to a racetrack when there's been a pileup," said Ray McLaughlin, a district chief with the Hendersonville Fire Department. "Everyone started bouncing off one another."
The vast majority of the injuries that were reported were whiplash injures involving the neck and back. One Hendersonville man did die however. The 28-year-old was the only person seriously injured in this massive crash which sent eight others to the Hendersonville Medical Center for minor injuries.
Witnesses say that the pileup was caused by a curved overpass of the road which had a thin layer of ice on it. The ice caused people to crash and the dense fog prevented people from stopping before they hit the cars in front of them.
"Once you had contact, you just looked in your rear view mirror and held on tight," one driver said. The driver added that many people got out of their cars after the crashes to check on other drivers. He attempted to walk to the first car in the line of crashes.
"The fog was so thick, I walked for a while but I didn't see the end," he said.
One driver said that she was able to stop before hitting the cars in front of her but that she was rear-ended by other drivers.
"I started hearing all this banging behind me," the woman said of the wrecks behind her. "I have never been involved in a wreck like this."
Another driver said that he intends to come to work late on the next foggy morning.
Source: Associated Press, "1 dead in foggy highway pileup near Nashville," Kristin Hall, Dec. 1, 2011