2 dead, 26 injured in 50-vehicle expressway pileup in Gunma

A massive traffic pileup involving more than 50 vehicles left two people dead and 26 others injured—five of them seriously—on Friday evening in Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, police said.

The accident occurred around 7:30 p.m. on the outbound lane of the Kan-Etsu Expressway in Minakami after vehicles apparently skidded on icy roads as snow fell. Police reported that at least 10 vehicles caught fire, and firefighting efforts took over seven hours to bring the blazes under control.

According to investigators, the chain-reaction crash began when a truck slammed into another truck that had stopped following a single-vehicle accident, setting off collisions across roughly 300 meters of roadway.

Among the fatalities was a 77-year-old woman from Tokyo, who was sitting in the rear seat of a family car. Another victim was found in the driver’s seat of a large truck. Twenty-one other people sustained minor injuries.

The expressway section was later shut down, with rows of mangled and burnt-out vehicles blocking the outbound lanes. At the time of the crash, drivers had been advised to reduce speed to 50 kilometers per hour due to snowy conditions.

A driver in his 60s recalled that his truck struck the median as he swerved to avoid another car. “The ice made it difficult to steer,” he said, adding that he heard four explosions behind him. “I feared for my life.”