A pair of recent highway accidents created quite a saucy — and slippery — situation in different parts of the country.
The first accident happened on Monday in Vacaville, California, where a truck hauling a load of tomatoes crashed following a chain-reaction accident near Highway 80. Tomatoes were strewn about several lanes of Northern California traffic after a big-rig hauling tomatoes went through the center divide, according to California Highway Patrol.
CHP said that crews had cleaned the eastbound lanes of I-80 but one westbound lane remained closed at least six hours after the crash as a tow truck simultaneously worked to remove the tomato-hauler which still had some of its produce inside. Three people were injured, with one major injury and two minor injuries, according to CNN.
The second accident took place in Memphis, Tennessee, where an 18-wheeler carrying Bertolli Alfredo Sauce crashed on Highway I-55 and created a mess on Tuesday afternoon. The resulting melee also injured one woman who was taken to the hospital with non-critical injuries.
Memphis police said the truck hit a retaining wall spilling the creamy, cheesy goo across all lanes of northbound traffic, grinding traffic to a halt. Crews worked through dusk to clear the sauce — using cleaning equipment, not breadsticks, of course.
The pair of food spills may have caused people on the internet to joke about the coincidence — and boy did they joke.
On Tuesday, Rodger Sherman, journalist at the Ringer, tweeted, “If you are a trucker carrying pesto sauce across the United States you need to get off the road right now. Final Pastanation is upon us, it isn’t safe out there."
“Hey, I know the guy who owns that truck. It’s the Rig o’ Tony,” wrote one Twitter user.
"Have the pasta sauce companies launched a war?" asked someone on Reddit. "Is there a Pesto attack looming??"
“When the sauce smells like feet and there’s cheese in the street, that’s alfredo,” commented another Redditor.
“As someone who lives here you could smell it in the air for most of the evening last night. Was horrible haha,” someone else wrote on Reddit regarding the Alfredo spill.
“We laughed at his warning,” tweeted another person, showing former Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter vowing a “day of reckoning” would come.
All jokes aside, Alfredo sauce and tomatoes on the highway could have been the least of commuter’s worries. At least, this time, it wasn’t like a Pennsylvania truck spill earlier this year where 15,000 pounds of hot dog filler oozed its way onto roadways.
