The extreme weather in Germany caused havoc on the autobahn last night, with hundreds of drivers stuck in their vehicles overnight in the freezing cold. At times, the resulting traffic jams around Bielefeld stretched on for over 70 kilometres.

Extreme weather, extreme traffic

Over the weekend, police closed numerous stretches of the motorway after hundreds of accidents were reported and traffic jams started piling up. The chaos on the autobahn continued yesterday, with some unlucky drivers finding themselves trapped in their vehicles overnight in the freezing cold. The police have now called for people to avoid using the motorway.

From as early as Monday afternoon, the extreme weather caused traffic jams to pile up in both directions after trucks got stuck in the snow on the A2 roundabout near Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia. The congestion built up in both directions, stretching over 70 kilometres at some point, and despite a diversion being set up, the queues did not clear until the following morning.

Problems are reported to have spilt into the surrounding area, with trucks getting stuck on the B66n as far up as the Bielefeld city area. Road assistance vehicles have been unable to reach the trucks due to the traffic jam and road salt is only effective in temperatures above -7 degrees; temperatures were still around -10 on Tuesday morning.

Heavy vehicle violations

The police also reported problems on the A2 near Dortmund after a number of trucks got stuck in the direction of Oberhausen and had to be freed. This created ten-kilometre queues in the area, although this cleared up during the night. The police kept busy while work was underway to free the trucks by issuing over 340 violations to the truck drivers, who should not have been driving any vehicles weighing over 7,5 tons on the highway before 10 PM.

Police have now warned against driving on the A2 in the direction of Oberhausen as the roads are “mirror-smooth.”

Chaos on the German roads

The bad weather caused several other problems on Germany's roads last night. Traffic built up on the A4 in Hesse and, while the jam cleared up overnight, drivers were still stuck in their vehicles for around 15 hours. Police reported having to wake up truck drivers once the traffic started flowing again.

There were also reports of a truck that blocked A72 for four hours in Bavaria and over 20 traffic accidents are reported to have occurred in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.