Correction: The initial story said there were two collisions. In fact, the second collision happened earlier in the day in Napanee.
Napanee OPP say single lane closures to deal with cleanup of Thursday’s collision near Odessa will end near 3 p.m. on Friday.
The collision involved a transport truck that caused both directions of Highway 401 near Odessa to close Thursday afternoon.
The incident happened sometime before 3 p.m. on Nov. 22. according to OPP. Police say the transport truck was driving in the eastbound lanes and struck a red Mazda, then veered to the left and took out both median guardrails. The truck then drove into the westbound lanes where it struck a cube van travelling westbound, police say. The transport finally came to a stop against a rock cut on the side of the westbound lanes. The back-end of the red Mazda was completely destroyed during the collision.
Police say the driver of the transport truck was unconscious and was pulled from the vehicle by the driver of the cube van and other “good Samaritans” on the highway.
“We’re very fortunate for this collision that there were no serious injuries. All parties escaped with minor injuries, treated and released from hospital. The luck of that was extraordinary,” said Cont. Scott Woodburn with the Napanee OPP.
Charges against the transport driver are pending further investigation, say police.
The highway was closed in both directions between County Road 6 in Odessa and Gardiners Road in Kingston starting at 3 p.m. The eastbound lanes were opened at 6 p.m. and OPP opened the westbound lanes around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday evening.
Single lane closures were planned for Friday to allow for repair work to be done on the destroyed guardrails. As of noon on Friday, crews were working on the eastbound side. All lanes are expected to be completely open by 3:00 p.m., police say.
This collision was caused, OPP say, by the traffic from an earlier collision in the eastbound lanes near Kingston.
Police say the traffic from the morning Kingston collision was backed up all the way to Odessa due to a lane closure — the truck driver didn’t see that traffic had slowed, which caused him to rear-end the red Mazda.
As of 4:30 p.m., MTO said the traffic queue at Odessa was 7.1 kilometers long, and 4 kilometers long in Kingston.
The detours also caused major backups in the city of Kingston, especially on Bath Road and Sir John A. Macdonald Boulevard.
— More information to come.