- We’ve sure had some bizarre stuff flood our roads lately.
Every day, innumerable trucks and trailers transport thousands, if not millions of pounds of good over the highways all across the country. With such vast numbers of vehicles, it’s no wonder that sometimes they get in to accidents.
When a truck is damaged, there’s a good chance that some of its cargo ends up on the road. In the best-case scenario, the spill is harmless and traffic can continue moving along as usual.
Other times, though, the truck might be transporting something more unusual. And when that kind of stuff scatters all over the road, no one will be riding through it.
We’ve noticed that these kinds of incidents have happened weirdly regularly this year. So, for your convenience, we decided to compile some of the most bizarre spills of 2021 into one handy list.
Chicken Fat Leaves Mississippi Roads Dangerously Slippery
On the morning of August 3, drivers in New Albany, Mississippi, noticed that some of the town’s roads were covered in sand. What they might not have realized was that it was for their own protection.
Around 3:30 p.m., officers from the New Albany Police Department arrived to the scene of an accident near Highway 15. When they got there, they discovered that the roads were slick with a strange, slippery substance.
The liquid turned out to be chicken fat originating from a nearby biodiesel plant. During unloading, the top hatch of a tanker trailer hadn’t been properly fastened, and the fat spilled out onto the road every time the truck transporting stopped or started moving.
Fats and oils are slippery, and drivers following the truck soon confirmed that for themselves. The police reported that several cars had slipped and spun out of control when they hit the fat spills.
Crews from the local fire department and Mississippi Department of Transportation spread sand and dirt on the roads to give car wheels more traction. They also dumped lime to reduce the stench of the fat.
S*** Hits the Road in Florida
On July 20, the Interstate 95 near Rockledge, Florida, became the scene of an accident that got nasty. Very, very nasty.
A semi-truck and a dump truck collided on the near mile marker 195. Although both vehicles were completely wrecked, by some miracle neither driver was injured.
Unfortunately, the dump truck was carrying cow manure. The force of the crash sent the filthy cargo spilling all over the interstate.
Officials responding to the situation didn’t confirm exactly how much crap ended up on the road. But the I-95 was closed down until crews managed to move the totaled trucks and clean up the poop.
Talk about a s****y situation.
Tomato Spill Turns English Highway into a Horror Movie Scene
It’s not just Americans who know how to crash trucks, though. If you’d seen the A14 highway near Godmanchester, England, on June 2, you might’ve thought that thousands of lives had been lost.
The collision of two trucks left the road surface covered in what looked like gallons upon gallons of blood and gore. But not to worry, nobody died in the accident.
The red stuff was actually several tons of tomato puree and olive oil that one of the trucks was transporting. When mixed with dirt and sand on the road, they eerily resembled freshly pulped human remains.
“What looked like the set of a horror film was actually thousands of squashed tomatoes,” tweeted Cambridgeshire Constabulary.
No one got killed, but the tomato spill nonetheless closed the road down for an extended period of time. Traffic couldn’t return to A14 until the following day, but perhaps that was for the best.
Imagine how shocked any passing drivers would’ve been.
143 Pigs Block a Road in Virginia
Out of all the things that could spill out from a truck, you wouldn’t expect a horde of pigs to be among them. But lo and behold, that’s what blocked a road in Suffolk, Virginia, on May 24.
At approximately 2 a.m., a tractor trailer belonging to Smithfield Food overturned on Godwin Boulevard. The 167 pigs that were on the truck were unceremoniously dumped out onto the road.
Unfortunately, 12 of the animals died on the spot from injuries they sustained during the fall. According to Smithfield Foods, they also appropriately euthanized 12 other pigs that had gotten hurt during the crash.
That still left 143 pigs wandering around the crash site, completely blocking the road. It took several hours for crews to corral the animals together and move them off the road.
The weirdest part of the whole thing is that cases like this aren’t anything unusual on this stretch of road. Since 2008, a total of seven pig spills have taken place around the same area, with two happening in 2020.
Needless to say, locals are getting kind of sick of having pigs constantly block their roads.