As interstate crashes go, they don’t get much stranger than one that shut down I-75 in Clayton County for several hours Thursday night.
The bizarre chain of events began around 10 p.m., when a Clayton sheriff’s deputy clocked two northbound motorcycles at 110 mph, Channel 2 Action News reported.
A short time later, one of the motorcycles, which turned out to be stolen, struck the back of a Volkswagen in the same lane. The biker lost control and went airborne, the bike flying over the median wall and into the windshield of a southbound tractor-trailer.
The truck driver lost control of his rig and the trailer became disconnected from the tractor. The trailer then crashed through the median wall into the northbound lanes where it struck a sport utility vehicle.
“It takes a tremendous amount of force to rupture one of these concrete barriers,” Clayton County police Sgt. Ken Waits told Channel 2.
The rig’s tractor, which remained in the southbound lanes, caught fire and the deputy who had originally clocked the motorcycles pulled the trucker from the burning cab.
“He came up and was able to rescue the driver out of the truck,” Waits said.”The driver was not burned. The injuries he suffered were from the collision.”
Meanwhile, the crumpled wreckage of the motorcycle caught fire in the southbound lanes, where it was hit by a taxi that also caught fire.
The motorcyclist who started the chain reaction was critically injured. The truck driver was also taken to a local hospital, but the drivers of the other vehicles involved were not injured.
The second motorcyclist did not stop, according to Channel 2.
All lanes of I-75 were shut down near Mt. Zion Boulevard for several hours, but reopened before the beginning of the Friday morning commute.
“It’s one of the more unusual accidents that we’ve investigated,” Waits said.
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