A tomato truck involved in a three-vehicle crash made a soupy mess out of a Northern California highway Monday morning, where several lanes of traffic were shut down due to the 5 a.m. turmoil.
Slick roadways coated by skin, seeds, juice and oil led to four other vehicles sliding into auto-wrecks that left three people hospitalized. One of those motorists suffered serious injuries.
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California Highway Patrol officers shut down traffic on Highway 80 outside Vacaville, Calif., which is 35 miles southwest of Sacramento. The westbound truck hauling the tomatoes hit a center divider, causing its load to spill into eastbound traffic. BBC News reports that 150,000 splattered tomatoes left a red sauce on the roadway one patrolman said was “2 feet deep.”
According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, botanists consider tomatoes to be fruits while nutritionists tend to regard them as vegetables. The California Tomato Growers Association claims the Golden State is responsible for 90% of the nation’s processed tomatoes and half the total processed tomato tonnage around the globe.
With News Wire Services
