Cars driving over trailer crash fuel leak cause fire – don’t make it worse; avoid, stop if necessary

A trailer overturned near the Jalan Duta toll plaza on the New Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE) earlier today, blocking several lanes and causing massive congestion. Not only that, but its fuel tank also sprang a leak that spilled dangerous flammable liquid across the highway.

Indeed, a fire duly ensued along the resultant trail of diesel, as visible in the video posted by X user @aidanotayda. Although most motorists chose to drive around the trailer on the right-hand side (the clean side), a few vehicles were driven on the left side, running directly over the fuel as it flowed towards the drain.

This went about as well as you would expect. A silver Perodua Axia driving over the stream was immediately engulfed in flames – albeit thankfully only for a few seconds – while another trailer behind also caught fire. Luckily, by this time everyone behind had seen what had happened and decided to funnel towards the rightmost lane. It’s a good job that nothing worse happened.

Ingatkan apa yang meletup tadi rupanya lori terbalik

⚠️ Elak lalu Jalan Duta menghala arah utara
Accident lori terbalik pic.twitter.com/ph7BmLAAiv

— bébé (@aidanotayda) August 13, 2024

By now, it should be obvious what the lesson here is – don’t drive over any liquid pouring out of a vehicle that has been involved in an accident, as you will never know what it could be. We get that Malaysians are typically an impatient bunch that will take any shortcut to shorten their commute, and it’s not always obvious whether the said liquid is fuel (in which case you should err on the side of caution and avoid it anyway).

But when there’s fire involved, you should probably definitely take it as a sign to get as far away from it as possible. If the flames can be seen from a low-resolution video taken several stories up a condominium, it would’ve been painfully obvious to those on the ground. Jam or no jam, you wouldn’t want to risk immolation or make the fire worse, would you?

The fire, by the way, was eventually put out by a fire engine and water tanker nine minutes after Bomba received an emergency call at around noon. Free Malaysia Today reported that the driver of the partially-burnt trailer was thankfully only injured on his head and hand and was taken to the hospital.

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