As a personal injury lawyer practicing in Virginia, I pay a lot of attention to driver behavior on the road and the cause of car crashes as I drive around Virginia. I am also especially careful about driving and avoiding highway collisions when I have my daughters and son in the car with me. Recently I was driving my twin girls to a lacrosse game in Williamsburg, VA from our home in Norfolk when I saw a tremendous backup for miles around Yorktown. I tried to go slowly and be patient but wondered what was the cause of this stop and go traffic on a Saturday afternoon. It turns out that two cars had collided (one read-ending the other) on Interstate 64 (I-64) near the Lee Hall exit. By the time I got up to the wreck, the police were on the scene. From the best I could tell, these two drivers could have gotten their cars off to the broad shoulder or emergency turnoff section of the freeway.
Instead, they and the police were blocking the left hand lane and causing the traffic to come to a trickle to get past them in the one unblocked lane. I am not sure what the problem was. Drivers in automobile accidents should move their vehicles off the road to a position of safety, particularly after the police get there, if it is possible to do so. This is better for traffic flow and for the safety of those involved in the wreck. We got to the game just about on time and found out that it was delayed even further because the opposing team, which was coming from the Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina, was running even later than we were because of the same accident.
For some reason, that Lee Hall area on Interstate 64 westbound headed towards Richmond, Virginia and Williamsburg is a very common place for collisions and injuries. Amazingly, later that same day as we were headed back down the road in the opposite direction, I see across the median at nearly the same place as the earlier accident a pickup truck pulling a camper that goes out of control and turns over on its side. I could not tell what was the cause of this frightening looking accident, but was glad that my vehicle was not anywhere in the zone of danger when that person lost control of their rig which jack-knifed and was sitting broadside to the traffic in both lanes on the highway. Defensive driving is always needed because you never know what the vehicle next to you or ahead of you will do.