Within one week, two tractor trailers crashed on the same Hillsborough, N.C., overpass, spilling cargo onto I-85 below.
According to the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., state transportation officials are still trying to determine what caused the almost identical accidents.
According to the paper, the more recent accident occurred last Thursday when Thomas Blake McLester lost his load of 6,400 gallons of animal fat exiting I-85 south toward I-40 east. Officials speculate that McLester, who lives in Monroe, may have taken the curve too quickly. It is marked for 35 mph.
The truck rode along the guardrail until it hit the concrete bridge, when the tanker broke apart from the cab and fell across two lanes of I-85 south. The tank ruptured, spewing animal fat into the road and a nearby creek. No one was hurt, the paper said.
A week earlier, a tractor-trailer carrying corrugated cardboard took the same exit ramp too quickly and fell off the bridge at almost the exact same spot. That driver, Makario Johnson of Albany, Ga., was charged with exceeding safe speed for conditions. No one was injured in that accident either.
The paper said county officials recall three other times that truck drivers lost control at the overpass and spilled commodities -- cotton, beer and watermelons -- onto the highway below.
The paper quoted Patty Eason, operations engineer for the state Department of Transportation division that includes Orange County.
Eason said that before these accidents, the ramp was not considered a dangerous spot. She said the ramp isn't used much because local drivers usually know more direct ways to get to Chapel Hill and other points along I-40.
"These two accidents may be coincidental," she said. "It may be anything; we just want to make sure."
The investigation should take about a week, the paper reported.