Slick road conditions cause crash on I-90

NATICK, Mass. (WHDH) -- The mix of snow, slush and heavy rain left cars slipping and sliding throughout the day Tuesday.

The wintry weather created a mess on the Mass. Pike when police say a car swerved trying to avoid a patch of snow and hit a tractor trailer, causing it to jack knife.

Another car became wedged underneath the tanker because the tractor trailer was sprawled across all three lanes

“She couldn’t stop. She went right underneath the middle of it,” said Mark Letourneau, tractor trailer driver.

Mark Letourneau said the car that started the chain reaction was “trying get into the middle lane, and when he did, I don’t know if he hit snow on the road and he just lost control and started spinning out in front of me. When he hit the guard rail, he bounced off and hit the truck. There was nothing I could do then. It just kind of pushed me sideways.”

Letourneau said the woman in the third vehicle, “had nowhere to go. I was across the road then I mean after he hit me, I -- you’re 50, 60 feet long, it’s three lanes, you had the whole road blocked. She just couldn’t stop.”

The crash, caught on a Department of Transportation camera, created a 10 mile backup on the Mass. Pike for more than an hour near Natick.

Letourneau says fortunately his tanker was empty.

State police say the driver of the SUV that caused the chained reaction suffered non life-threatening injuries while the woman driving the third car, and her passenger, suffered minor injuries.

The snow and ice in Brighton created a line of broken, shattered and bumped cars.

“I counted probably 15 to 20 from back in front of my apartment back down to BC,” said Jennifer Doss.

Doss came out to her car Tuesday morning on Commonwealth Avenue with a bent rearview mirror and damage to the back hatch. She believes a plow was to blame.

“It would make sense if I saw one or two and I thought maybe oh it was just an accident, they got a little too close or lost control. But the fact that I saw 15, 20 cars -- someone obviously knew that they were hitting people’s cars and didn’t stop to say anything,” Doss said.