Bourne, Massachusetts, saw a rough Wednesday on the roads leading to and around the Sagamore Bridge, as two separate crashes within the same morning hours left drivers stuck in long delays and sent several people to area hospitals.
The first incident happened around 8 a.m. on Route 3 near Exit 1B, on the approach to the Sagamore Bridge heading toward Plymouth and Boston.
A tractor-trailer collided with another vehicle and ended up going down an embankment off the roadway. State police said two adults were taken to area hospitals, though their injuries were not considered life-threatening.
Because the truck had gone off the road, crews needed a crane to pull it back up, which kept lanes closed for several hours. The Massachusetts State Police Truck Team was called in to investigate what caused the crash.
Bourne Police said traffic heading off Cape on Route 3 North was being rerouted by state police onto Scenic Highway, then State Road, before drivers could get back onto Route 3.
By 6:30 p.m. that evening, the road still wasn’t fully clear. MassDOT crews were working on repairing a guardrail damaged in the crash, and delays were still being reported for anyone trying to reach the Sagamore Bridge.
Head-On Collision on Sandwich Road Sends One to Hospital by Helicopter
While crews were dealing with the Route 3 crash, a second and more serious collision happened nearby on Sandwich Road along the Cape Cod Canal.
A pickup truck driven by a 43-year-old man from Pocasset crashed head-on with a Jeep driven by a 25-year-old man from North Carolina.
The injuries from this crash were severe enough that the driver of the pickup truck had to be flown to a hospital by medical helicopter. The Jeep driver was taken to an area hospital by ambulance.
Given how serious the crash was, the Cape Cod Law Enforcement Council’s Crash Reconstruction team was sent out to look into what happened. As of the latest update, investigators still hadn’t determined the cause.
The crash forced police to close Sandwich Road between the Mid-Cape Connector and Route 6 at the Bourne Rotary. Drivers in the area were told to find another way around rather than wait it out.
Between the two crashes, anyone trying to get on or off Cape Cod through Bourne dealt with a frustrating day of detours, backups, and slow going, especially for those heading toward the Sagamore Bridge.
The area around the bridge is already one of the busiest chokepoints on the Cape, and having two unrelated crashes happen within roughly the same stretch of road and timeframe made an already tricky commute even worse.
No further details have been released yet on charges or citations related to either crash, and both remain under investigation. Drivers heading toward the Sagamore Bridge in the coming days may want to check traffic conditions ahead of time, since cleanup work tied to the guardrail repair was still ongoing as of Wednesday evening.
