“Top 10 strangest motorway spillages” – official!

POWDERED cement spread over the M6 and 6,000 live chickens shed across the M62 – both feature in a national “Top 10 strangest spills” list.
Highways England, which runs the country’s motorway network, published the list – after 24 tonnes of lard closed the M11 in Essex – to highlight the challenges it faces in clearing incidents which can cause hours of disruption to road users.
From animal blood to argon, toilet rolls to toxic waste, wine to washing up liquid – highways teams have faced many mammoth challenges to clear up after motorway incidents.
The unexpected nature of motorway incidents means it can be hard to plan for what may happen on any given day. Over the past few years there have been numerous spills, ranging from the strange to the dangerous.
In every case, highways teams have worked quickly and under pressure to remove debris, clean the road, and fix damage before safely reopening the carriageway to drivers.
In some cases, thousands of items had to be picked up by hand after spreading across several lanes of the motorway.
Melanie Clarke, director of customer operations at Highways England, explained: “Our roads are among the safest in the world, and safety is our number one priority.
“Our role is to ensure we clear incidents quickly and keep traffic moving to minimise delays. We work closely with the emergency services, in challenging circumstances, to try to keep drivers moving after an incident.
“We know drivers get frustrated when their journeys are disrupted but we do all we can to clean the road quickly after an incident – and it’s often much more complicated than simply moving the vehicles off the road to reopen it. That’s why it can often take longer for us to safely reopen roads when a potentially dangerous substance is spilled in an incident.
“Our teams expect the unexpected, but of course, when you’re dealing with ten tonnes of salmon, dangerous toxic chemicals, or emulsion paint, the clean-up operation is somewhat complicated.”
To help drivers understand the challenges of safely clearing up after an incident, Highways England has compiled the list of the strangest spills on England’s motorways which as well as the cement and chickens incidents includes: raw human sewage, hundreds of tins of baked beans, 20 tonnes of Marmite, thousands of lager cans, 10 tonnes of salmon, melamine formaldehyde resin and phosphoric acid, animal blood and refrigerated liquid oxygen.