Three people died on the night of Friday to Saturday February 18 in an accident involving a vehicle driven by an octogenarian traveling in the opposite direction on the A9 motorway in the Gard.
The accident, involving three light vehicles and a heavy goods vehicle, took place around 3:30 a.m. in the Lyon-Montpellier direction, at Roquemaure.
Three men, an 83-year-old Gardois and two residents of Drôme, 37 and 31, died.
A shocked 50-year-old man and a 16-year-old teenager were taken care of by a medico-psychological emergency unit.
The truck driver, a 25-year-old man, was unharmed.
The cause of the accident is "
linked to the octogenarian driver in the wrong direction on the highway
," Colonel Didier Ressayre, number 2 of the Gard gendarmerie group, told AFP.
Traffic was able to be restored to a single lane from 9:45 a.m., said operator Vinci Autoroutes in a press release, which indicated that it expected “risks of disruption” for departures on vacation scheduled for
Saturday
in due to "
emergency repairs (which) continue at the level of the accident
".