The snowstorm arrived on Friday afternoon and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) had issued a yellow warning for snow in Skåne and Blekinge. Several authorities had also warned against venturing out in traffic, to avoid situations like the one on E22 last winter.
Trucks still got stuck in both directions near Kristianstad, which led to the motorway being closed until midnight. The situation was worst on E6, where traffic occasionally came to a complete standstill, according to the Swedish Transport Administration's press chief Bengt Olsson.
There were a lot of trucks that got stuck in the hills, first outside Helsingborg and then outside Landskrona, he says.
Several motorists testify that they got stuck in their cars for many hours.
Towing trucks takes time
Towing trucks often takes longer than towing cars, as they require heavy-duty tow trucks that are fewer and harder to get than regular tow trucks. It's during that time that the congestion forms, according to Bengt Olsson.
It's been salted, it's been plowed. The snow on the ground isn't the big problem, but that trucks can't make it up the hill, he says.
The tow truck driver: "Huge problem"
Tow truck driver Tobias Levin, who owns Assistancekåren in Helsingborg and Landskrona, believes that both car drivers and truck drivers have too little knowledge of how to behave – and that the road maintenance was "catastrophic". Many of the trucks and cars also still had summer tires.
It's enough that one car starts to skid, which maybe has summer tires, and then there are a lot of trucks behind, which always happens on these roads, so everything comes to a standstill.
The situation on the motorway made the approximately two miles between the cities take around 1.5 hours to drive.
It becomes a huge problem for us when people place themselves so stupidly that we can't get through, and they maybe can't get anywhere because they have summer tires.
Meetings with the haulage industry
The Swedish Transport Administration had earlier this year, for the first time, meetings with the haulage industry about what the industry could expect before winter. Bengt Olsson states that the authority had made many preparations and is questioning the trucks' continued problems.
It was passable on E6 for cars, on E22 it was passable for cars, even up the hills. It has something to do with trucks and what it is, we would like to have an answer to.
