Detroit news...or lack thereof

Val, Steph, and I went up to Detroit on Saturday to visit the newly renovated MGM Grand Detroit. We were making great time until about 6:00pm when we encountered a fresh accident about 11 miles South of Detroit.

A car had, apparently, flipped and turned sideways, blocking all lanes of traffic on I-75 North. Only the left shoulder was getting by...until the police arrived on the scene and used the left shoulder as a police-only parking lot.

While the police, and a handful of Fire and EMS vehicles tended to the accident the motorists on I-75 just sat and waited. Some got of their cars and wandered up to the accident scene - or into the nearby trees for relief.

I looked up Detroit traffic on my phone and saw that they had completely closed down I-75 a couple exits behind where we were sitting. At that point, we knew we were going to be sitting there for a while, so we found some snacks to eat in Stephanie's car and enjoyed making fun of the motorists-turned-pedestrians that were wandering the expressway.

 

After over an hour of waiting, the police finally moved their cars over and re-opened the left shoulder, allowing us to continue on our way to the MGM Grand.

We spent a few hours there at the casino: gambling a little bit and waiting in long lines for crappy food. We left at around 10:00pm, heading back down I-75.

Much to our surprise, I-75 North was STILL closed at the scene of the earlier accident. Police were still on the scene with surveying equipment and the vehicles involved (there was a second vehicle about 100 yards away from the flipped car) hadn't moved since we had last seen them.

When we got home I looked online to see if there was any mention of this accident and road closure, assuming that for them to close down the road for that long there must be some sort of story. However, I found NOTHING. No mention of the accident and/or road closure on the Detroit Free Press website or any of the local Detroit TV station websites.

I just looked again today, figuring that maybe all reporters in Detroit took the weekend off and STILL find nothing. How can you close a major expressway for at least 3 hours and have not a peep in the local news? Were all of Detroit's news crews at the MGM Grand? That may explain why there was a 40 minute wait for crappy chinese take out food at the casino's food court.

(Is it just me, or have I seen an unusal number of accident recently? Maybe I should just lock myself in my condo like my neighbor)

Scary Scene in Twinsburg

This weekend there was a horrific accident on Route 91 outside of my neighborhood. Luckily, we had made a Swenson's run, and were well clear of the area at the time of the accident. However, on arriving home, Rt 91 was closed and I had to take the back way into my development.

Stephanie noticed that there was crime scene tape roping off the area through the trees near Rt 91, so we walked out to see what was going on.

We found a gruesome scene - four cars completely destroyed, 12 police cars from all over the area, and a huge stretch of road roped off with police tape.

We found out from onlookers that an elderly man had been driving northbound on Rt 91 when he suffered a heart attack (or some other health problem) and lost control of his vehicle. He struck 3 other vehicles before careening off the road and into a hill that separates the road from the nearby houses.

We watched the swarm of police investigate the scene (including brining in a firetruck to lift a police photographer high in the air to take aerial shots of the cars) until they were about to remove the body of the elderly man...which we didn't need to see.

More information here

Another odd accident scene

Ever since I started commuting across town due to my new job, I've seen quite a few impressive accidents. You may remember this one from a while back. This morning I passed another one.




It's a little bit tough to tell...but that's a minivan, completely flipped upside down on I-90 E.

Too bad they don't have video of the car actually flipping over...I'm curious how it's physically possible for a vehicle to end up like that.

This didn't help traffic...

This crazy accident is what snarled traffic and made my commute home today a mess.

It happened on the eastbound side of I-480 today. I was taking I-480 westbound so I got to see the accident without getting stuck in the 15+ miles of traffic jam that it created.

(Yes...that's a Corvette wedged underneath a semi)