Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket, which allows them to instantly take a photo or film a significant event. However, several years ago, capturing an event or an accident was possible if you had a separate camera with you. These days, a social media user has shared photos that are almost 30 years old, capturing a huge car accident on the Jūrmala highway.
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The dramatic events unfolded on the morning of August 19, 1996 around 8:00 a.m. – the Jūrmala highway was covered in thick fog, when a driver decided to stop on the side of the road and wipe the front windshield at the very border of the resort town, driving from Riga. However, such an obstacle, invisible in the fog, created an avalanche of collisions, which became the most serious road traffic accident in the 90s.
As eyewitnesses told the newspaper “Diena” at the time, two trucks hit the car parked on the side of the road from the beginning, and then every subsequent car driving behind them crashed into vehicles that had already crashed. As one of the injured VAZ drivers told the newspaper, the fog was so thick that the visibility was only a few meters, so he only drove at a speed of 40 km/h, but it did not help to avoid the collision.
Fortunately, there were no fatalities in this accident, while two people received medical attention.
We remind you that in 1996 there was no civil law insurance for land vehicle owners (OCTA), it was introduced in Latvia only one year later.
An accident with an even larger number of cars on the Jūrmala highway had previously occurred in 1981.
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