There are numerous trucks carrying food at any point of time and numerous trucks getting into crashes, so there are plenty of truck crashes that lead to food being strewn everywhere. And while some of that, from roasted avocados to spilled vodka, isn’t necessarily salvageable, some of it leads to a bounty for those who happen to be nearby. For example, last December, local officials let Lakeland, Florida residents recover some frozen food spilled in a truck-train collision (which the truck company said it could no longer use).
That crash was on a side road, though, so it created fewer traffic problems than a crash in Alabama Saturday night that spilled chicken tenders all over State Route 35. That crash saw the Cherokee County Emergency Management Agency take to Facebook Sunday night to ask people to please stop picking up the chicken tenders, mentioning that they were unsafe to eat and even threatening them with charges:
Chief deputy Josh Summerford of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office told Tim Carman of The Washington Post that motorists stopping to grab the chicken had created significant traffic problems:
The latter scene took place over the weekend on Route 35, a lonesome stretch that cuts through Cherokee County on the eastern edge of Alabama, not far from the Georgia border. An 18-wheeler crashed and spilled a load of prepackaged chicken products on the side of the road. This two-lane ribbon of asphalt soon turned into a roadside buffet.
“There were some people trying to get the chicken,” Josh Summerford, chief deputy for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, told The Washington Post. “They pulled off to the side. That was not a safe scenario.”
…Curtis Summerville, spokesman for the division of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency that covers Cherokee County, told The Post that the driver had lost control of his vehicle when the truck spilled its load. Officials have not yet determined what caused the crash, Summerville said. The spokesman couldn’t say how many drivers may have helped themselves to free chicken.
“Keep in mind,” he said, “we investigated the crash. Anything that happened after the crash, I wouldn’t have a number on that.”
So it’s unknown just how many people are eating pavement-found chicken tenders. But the emergency management agency certainly wasn’t happy with how many stopped to try it.
[The Washington Post; the above-pictured chicken tenders are from Popeyes, and are probably much better than the ones spilled on the side of the road here.]
