A pickup truck driver was cited in a crash that left I-985 North in Gwinnett County littered with hundreds of watermelons during the Thursday morning rush.
Pickup driver Bernardo Perez, 52, of Gainesville, was cited for failure to maintain a lane and driving too fast for conditions, according to a Georgia State Patrol crash report obtained Friday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The watermelon spill was the latest addition to a list of weird things that have snarled metro Atlanta traffic through the years.
PHOTO GALLERY: Weird things that have snarled Atlanta traffic
Troopers responded about 5:45 a.m. to a crash involving a Ford F-350 and a tractor-trailer on I-985 North at the I-85 split. The Ford, which was hauling the watermelons, was heading north on I-985 in the left lane. The tractor-trailer, driven by Donald Clark, 55, of Conyers, was in the right lane.
According to the GSP, Perez “failed to maintain his lane of travel and crossed the fog line to the left.”
At that point, he overcorrected and lost control of the Ford, hitting the left side of the tractor-trailer, the GSP said in a statement.
The tractor-trailer left the roadway and stopped in the center median, and the Ford hit a concrete traffic barrier and “lost a large portion of his load,” officials said.
The watermelons went everywhere and blocked both lanes of I-985 North until just after 8 a.m.
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