Posted at: 12/14/2009 10:48 PM
By: Jill Kasparie

Print Story  Email to a Friend

Slippery Roads Cause Crashes

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- From fender benders to a semi truck jackknifing, crews stayed busy Monday with car accidents.  The weather created a messy day on the roads, and it all started early in the morning.

"Water was actually falling just like rain that was refreezing to the roadways," said Minnesota Department of Transportation's Robert Langanki.

The slippery conditions caused numerous accidents, like one on I-35 in Faribault. At 10:00 A.M., the truck hit a patch of ice sending it off the bridge.  Then near Kasson at around 2:00 P.M. a two-vehicle accident slowed traffic.

"A pickup was driving westbound on 14 and was going too fast for the conditions and spun out and lost control and the vehicle behind it collided with it," said Minnesota State Patrol's Sgt. Eric Bormann.

While there were no serious injuries in these crashes, a large number of collisions kept emergency responders busy.

"All day today Monday, people have just been driving too fast, a lot of cars in the ditches, a lot of cars colliding with each other," Sgt. Bormann said.

As the accident toll rises, so is business at collision shops.

"After the storm is was kind of quiet but after a couple days with people driving on the icy side streets, it's been busy a lot of cars towed in," said Ford Collision Shop Estimator John Trower.

Cars in the shop can get pricey for residents.

"That particular car slide and hit a curb and that's exactly what happens, it bent the suspension down underneath and creates one of those $2,500 repair bills," Trower said.

But the dicey conditions are not over yet.

"Right now we're experiencing a lot of refreeze where we went and melted all of these roadways surfaces during the daylight hours when the sun was up and now that the sun's going down, temperatures are starting to drop and we're getting these glazed over patches of ice on our roadway system," Langanki said.

He said it would take crews 24 to 48 hours to get a handle on all the black ice, so he warns drivers to slow down and keep an eye out for slippery spots on the roadway.

Langanki also told ABC 6 that these conditions could actually be more dangerous than driving during the blizzard.

That's because people can't see the ice they're approaching on the roads, while snow is obviously much more visible.