PITTSFIELD — In one of the more spectacular area car accidents in recent memory, a Burnham man in a Saab sailed off an overpass and landed on a guardrail on Interstate 95.

Franz Spiegel, 43, of Burnham, complained of chest pains, but survived. He was the only person involved in the accident, according to Maine State Trooper Derrick Record.

“When I heard the call, I was expecting a fatal,” he said. “He probably wasn’t going a ridiculous speed for the road, but it was probably too fast for conditions.”

Spiegel had been traveling from Burnham to Canaan when he hit an icy patch on the bridge and veered up onto the guard rail around 10 a.m. Sunday. While Spiegel was being loaded into an ambulance, a walk up to the top of the overpass revealed snow and ice that had been packed into a rounded bobsled-like chute over the interstate.

It was the ramping effect of the packed ice sloping up to the guardrails, coupled with perhaps a little too much speed, that enabled Spiegel’s vehicle to slide up onto the guardrail, according to another Maine State Trooper, Sean Kinney.
“Luckily, he landed so most of the vehicles” did not have a difficult time avoiding the Saab, Kinney said.

Several drivers witnessed Spiegel’s Saab slide along six sections of guardrail along the Johnson Flat Road overpass — roughly the width of the two interstate lanes plus the areas on the shoulders — before plummeting to the highway below, Kinney said.

No witnesses stayed at the scene, however.

The car landed rear-first and upright, straddling the guardrail along the northbound lanes of Interstate 95, its back end teetering over a snowbank and its front end hanging over the asphalt shoulder.

Both rear wheels appeared to have broken from the axle and dangled at odd angles. Fluids and some broken glass collected below the front end of the vehicle before it was lifted onto a flat-bed truck and towed away.

Traffic was light, as it was a Sunday morning. Cars and tractor-trailers backed up perhaps a half a mile while first responders worked to clear the left lane. At about 11 a.m., fire trucks were beginning to pull away from the scene.

Joel Elliott — 861-9252
jelliott@centralmaine.com