The Caetano storm has passed, there is no more snowfall expected. But this snow has wreaked havoc on the roads. Thousands of vehicles stuck, sometimes for several hours, in the middle of the night, in the cold… In Doubs, 2,500 heavy goods vehicles traveling on the A36 found themselves stuck all day on Friday.
However, these snowfalls had been predicted since the morning. We knew that there would be between 15 and 20 centimeters in Montbéliard, but in this region, accustomed to winter conditions, the authorities erred on the side of overconfidence: no closure of highways to heavy goods vehicles, simply troubleshooting on a case-by-case basis, which seemed to be sufficient at first.
“I think we were victims of our good management. We managed to unblock trucks, put them back on their side, it was not forbidden to say to ourselves that we would succeed in freeing [l’autoroute, NDLR]and moreover this is what has been done on several occasions”, estimates Saadia Tamelikecht, chief of staff of the Doubs prefecture.
“We had freed one of the lanes on which the cars were passing, and then obviously, at one point, because we had a few truck drivers who behaved inconsistently, there was one who drove off, and 700m later finds itself across“, she whispers.
In the end, 2,500 trucks were blocked, but the authorities waited until Friday morning to finally put in place filteringto check that heavy goods vehicles were actually equipped with snow tires to have the right to pass.
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