18-Car Pile-up in India Caused by Air Pollution Is All Kinds of Scary

You hear stories about unmarked roads where everybody drives by their own rules, which in the end seem to come down to just one: do whatever you want as long as you get away with it. You think it's all a romantic exaggeration to make things sound worse than they are, and then you speak to somebody who has actually driven there, and everything is confirmed. Plus, they might mention the cows as well.

With that in mind, the last thing Indian traffic needs is some additional problems - say a fog that drastically reduces visibility. Except this isn't fog as we know it; no, it's fog as the Chinese who live in Beijing or Guangzhou know it.

The ridiculously high levels of air pollution have gotten so bad in some parts of India that the smog is literally as dense as heavy fog. They say the recommended safe limit can be exceeded ten times, making air not only unbreathable, but also quite opaque.

This highway pile-up you see here happened near New Delhi, about 30 miles away from the Indian capital city which has recently been dubbed a "gas chamber" due to its air quality. The reason behind the recent hike in pollution levels are thought to be the colder temperatures and slow winds.

The footage shows the visibility was reduced to just about 30 feet or so (roughly ten meters), making driving on the highway almost like doing in at nighttime with nothing more than a torch to light the way. Add the fact not a lot of drivers had their lights on, and the only surprising thing is that this was the only pile-up.

It reportedly involved 18 vehicles, at least one of which was a big coach bus. The vehicles also look to be overloaded with people, making it an almost miracle there weren't more injuries. Also, they didn't look like they were in any rush to leave the cars, despite the threat of being rear-ended being very real at any given time.