Car, transport truck crash on Highway 101

By Lawrence Powell

The Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

The female driver of a silver Honda Accord was airlifted to hospital in Halifax after her westbound car crossed the centerline and struck an eastbound tractor-trailer on Highway 101 at Kingston early Tuesday afternoon.

Annapolis Valley Traffic Services’ Sgt. Rich Walkinshaw said the woman’s injuries were serious. He said the jaws of life were used to extricate her from the vehicle.

"Preliminary investigation suggests the passenger vehicle driver fell asleep crossing the center line into the path of the truck," said Walkinshaw. He said the woman is from Digby.

The crash happened on a straight stretch of the highway several hundred metres west of Exit 17A. The car ended up in the ditch back on its own side of the road while the Home Hardware transport truck continued another 100 metres east and came to rest with the cab slanted down into the southern ditch.

The impact of the two vehicles ripped the passenger-side fuel tank off the truck, spilling diesel onto a long stretch of asphalt as the truck came to a stop. The fuel ignited more than 100 metres of the eastbound lane and the truck cab caught on fire. The fuel tank, estimated by those on the scene to hold as much as 150 gallons, came to rest in the south ditch about 20 metres from the stopped truck. The truck’s driver managed to escape uninjured and was still at the scene late in the afternoon.

Kingston Volunteer Fire Department Chief Watson Armstrong said when his firefighters arrived the cab was fully engulfed in flame. Firefighters quenched the blaze but stood by with hoses at the ready while RCMP investigated the scene, and later when tow trucks arrived.

Traffic was rerouted through Kingston and back onto Highway 101 at the Marshall Road exit.

The road was still closed late in the afternoon while tow truck operators loaded the car onto a flatbed and disconnected the truck cab from the trailer and waited for another cab to arrive to move the trailer.

Walkinshaw said the woman was lucky to be alive, explaining that the car impacted the truck on an angle -- just enough that the truck appeared to have rotated the car and pushed it back across the road. He said a foot or two difference would probably have been lethal. He said the truck would have gone right over top of the Honda.

Walkinshaw said damage to the front end of the car was total but the passenger compartment, or ‘engineered life space’ was hardly damaged. He said airbags deployed and the woman was wearing her seatbelt.

Assisting Traffic Services were RCMP members from Kingston, Department of Transportation, Kingston Volunteer Firefighters, EHS, and LifeFlight. Walkinshaw said the Department of Environment was also contacted.