Florida 47-Car Pileup – Manatee’s Largest Auto Accident Crash in 10+ Years
A multi-vehicle pileup at a Florida highway that injured over fifty people and damaged dozens of vehicles occurred on Friday. Victims blame near blinding storms on Interstate 75 for Manatee’s largest accident in the past decade, authorities however, say drivers are responsible for adjusting their speed to match road conditions. A cross county effort to piece the stories together has proven successful so far. Authorities expect to have the case investigated in ten days.
English: State Trooper of the Florida Highway Patrol supervises cleanup of a multi-car wreck on the Howard Frankland Bridge in St. Petersburg Florida on the morning of June 9, 2006. Category:Images of emergency vehicles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
According to Bradenton Herald, the Florida Highway Patrol, along with other agencies have continued to investigate the accident that happened at University Parkway Friday afternoon and left the southbound lanes of the highway closed for at least six hours.
Insight from the investigation has uncovered that there were at least twelve micro accidents involved that made up the large accident that spanned the roadway near mile marker 213. Witnesses, victims and officials agree that visibility was overall poor. Hard rain strained the visibility of even the most trained drivers.
FHP Lt. Chris Miller told the Harold that “drivers are responsible for changing their driving to match the weather conditions. If heavy rain, fog — whatever conditions exist — they have to reduce their speed and increase following distance so they can take evasive action safely.” Hence, the biggest contributing factor to the micro-crashes was driver’s error.
An investigation is expected to be completed within 10 days, per Lt. Miller. FHS will be in charge of creating the overall picture of the accident and accomplish to do so with the cooperation of the drivers and witnesses involved and the evidence derived from the scene. A laundry list of people are expected to receive charges of careless driving and failure to use due care are pending, he said.
An onslaught of secondary collision occurred as people began to slam on their brakes upon coming across the initiatal collision on the south end of the overpass. “As the other traffic was coming up onto the crash scene, everybody started hitting brakes and secondary collisions happened behind them,” Miller said. “It was definitely a domino effect.”
Emergency personnel from Manatee and Sarasota counties responded to the scene. First responders were dispatched at 3:11 p.m. and the southbound lanes reopened at 9:09 p.m.
Records show that at least fifty-two people were injured; two of those were airlifted with critical injuries while at least twenty were taken via ground on ambulances to local hospitals. There were neither deaths; nor life-threatening injuries.
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Reviewed by Chris H. in 2012.