France’s A10 motorway, which runs from Paris all the way down to Bordeaux, was the scene of a serious accident in the early hours of Friday morning.
According to French daily 20 Minutes, the driver of a truck carrying around 200 pigs lost control of his vehicle’s steering as it capsized and crashed on its side.
A total of 113 pigs died in the accident close to the historic town of Saintes in the southwestern department of Charente-Maritime.
Two people were also injured in the incident.
#A10 coupée direction Bordeaux après St Jean d'Angély (n°34) suite à un accident de poids lourd. Point de situation ?. Restez à l'écoute de @Radio1077 pic.twitter.com/9COpMATmg4
— VINCI Autoroutes (@VINCIAutoroutes) August 10, 2018
Motorway company Vinci ended up cutting traffic on the A10 in both directions at around 6 am (first completely and then partially) until the rescue of the surviving and injured animals had been completed.
Another truck and two cranes had to be sent to the scene of the accident to lift the wreckage off the road and transport the surviving and injured animals to their destination.
There was heavy congestion in both directions as a result of the incident on Friday morning, a day already forecast to have difficult traffic across l’Héxagone, according to road information centre Bison Futé.
The side of the A10 where the accident took place, Paris-Bordeaux direction remained shut until 1pm while traffic was resumed in the opposite direction several hours earlier.
Rather surprisingly, this is not the first road accident involving pigs to have happened on the A10. In January 2016, another truck carrying swines overturned and spilled open, forcing security forces to track down the animals, and pen them directly on the highway.
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