18-car pile-up on Delhi-Agra Expressway, fifteen injured

NOIDA: Fifteen people were injured, one of them seriously, in an 18-car pile-up on a fogged-out Yamuna Expressway early on Tuesday morning.

It all began when the driver of a Toyota Innova slammed the brakes in the middle of the road because of extremely low visibility around 8am. A speeding Swift Dzire immediately rammed the SUV .

What followed for the next 30 minutes was a massive pile-up near Kalauna village on the MathuraGreater Noida side of the expressway , 20km ahead of Jewar toll plaza.

A pile-up involving 18 cars on the Yamuna expressway on Tuesday morning injured 15 people. The high-speed road was fogged out with the visibility down to just 2.5 metres when an Innova suddenly braked on the middle of the road at 8 am, sparking the pile-up.

Expressway officials rushed three ambulances, three cranes and one fire tender to the spot.The vehicles were removed from the stretch and the victims rushed to hospitals. Traffic was also stopped at Jewar toll plaza and at Mathura toll plaza for two hours.

Akhil Kumar was lucky to escape unhurt. He was driving his Maruti Ertiga on the fast lane. "I was going from Agra to Delhi when I saw some people signaling me to stop the vehicle. I immediately stopped and avoided hitting the car in front. But soon other speeding vehicles started ramming into my car and choked the road," Kumar said.

Six of the injured were admitted to Kailash Hospital in Jewar.Dr A K Singh, medical superintendent of the hospital, said most had facial, abdominal and head injuries. "Some had cuts on their faces due to broken windshield glasses.

One patient had a fracture in his knee. One of them, Neelam Singh, has been shifted to ICU as she received severe injuries in her stomach," Singh said. All other patients were discharged from hospital after first-aid.