Cars worth £2.6 million crash in Japan
Japanese police are blaming the destruction of eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini in a £2.6 million, 14-car crash on Sunday on excessive speed.
A witness told Japanese television that he saw the parade of supercars travelling at speeds of up to 100mph, which was double the speed limit on the Chugoku Expressway, in southern Japan, due to heavy rain that had made the surface slick.
“A group of cars was doing 140kph (87mph) to 160kph,” the unnamed man told TBS News. “One of than span and they all ended up in this huge mess.”
In all, a dozen cars have been reduced to scrap metal in the accident, including at least 10 that are among the most expensive and sough-after among collectors. No fewer than eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo were among the victims of Sunday morning’s collision, while the other victims were two top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz, a Nissan GT-R and a Toyota Prius hybrid.
The drivers of the high-performance autos were apparently members of a car collectors’ club out for a less-than-leisurely spin, although it appears that the person behind the wheel of the Toyota Prius was simply in the wrong place when the accident occurred.
Police declined a request to identify the drivers involved in the crash, although Mitsuyoshi Isejima, the executive officer of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Expressway Traffic Police, was quoted by Bloomberg as describing the drivers as “A gathering of narcissists.”
Police believe the accident was caused at around 10:15am when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left lane on a gradual 400-metre curve on the expressway, close to Shimonoseki in the far south-west tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu.
It took local police more than six hours to clear the highway of debris and Japanese news programmes have shown repeated shots of the cars scattered across the road.
No one has been yet been charged over the accident.
A witness told Japanese television that he saw the parade of supercars travelling at speeds of up to 100mph, which was double the speed limit on the Chugoku Expressway, in southern Japan, due to heavy rain that had made the surface slick.
“A group of cars was doing 140kph (87mph) to 160kph,” the unnamed man told TBS News. “One of than span and they all ended up in this huge mess.”
In all, a dozen cars have been reduced to scrap metal in the accident, including at least 10 that are among the most expensive and sough-after among collectors. No fewer than eight Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo were among the victims of Sunday morning’s collision, while the other victims were two top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz, a Nissan GT-R and a Toyota Prius hybrid.
The drivers of the high-performance autos were apparently members of a car collectors’ club out for a less-than-leisurely spin, although it appears that the person behind the wheel of the Toyota Prius was simply in the wrong place when the accident occurred.
Police declined a request to identify the drivers involved in the crash, although Mitsuyoshi Isejima, the executive officer of the Yamaguchi Prefecture Expressway Traffic Police, was quoted by Bloomberg as describing the drivers as “A gathering of narcissists.”
Police believe the accident was caused at around 10:15am when the driver of a red Ferrari was switching from the right lane to the left lane on a gradual 400-metre curve on the expressway, close to Shimonoseki in the far south-west tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu.
It took local police more than six hours to clear the highway of debris and Japanese news programmes have shown repeated shots of the cars scattered across the road.
No one has been yet been charged over the accident.
