Two sides to artic accident reports
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• Reports in the national Press last week of an accident on Al near Hatfield. Hots, involving three cars and an articulated vehicle carrying a container, stated or implied that the accident occurred when the container left the vehicle, or when the artic overturned. It was said that the container crushed one car and that the other two cars collided with the wreckage. All three car drivers died.
The suggestion that the container left the trailer led CM to make some inquiries; and while the exact causes of the accident and the deaths must, of course, be matters for a coroner's court to establish, our information on this point does not correspond with the picture presented in the newspaper reports.
A police spokesman told CM last week that, far from the container being shed by the vehicle, thetrailer and ISO container remained attached after the accident and had to beseparated to permit removal of the wreckage. The tractive unit, too, remained coupled to the trailer after the accident, though both were lying on their side.
The accident took place at the end of a stretch of dual carriageway where the four lanes are reduced to three.