Semi and car collide at Parks Highway Mile 186 as a second truck jackknifes

A semi-truck and a car collided at Mile 186 of the Parks Highway at 9:21 pm Friday, and a second semi jackknifed into the ditch trying to avoid the wreck, Alaska State Troopers said. Everyone involved declined medical attention at the scene.

Mile 186 is about 17 miles north of Hurricane, where the highway crosses the Alaska Railroad.

Both trucks ended up partially blocking the road, and the highway was partly closed for more than five hours while crews recovered the vehicles. The truck in the collision was operated by Big Dreams, and the one that jackknifed by Two Rivers, troopers said.

In their dispatch, troopers reminded commercial drivers that long combination vehicles, known as doubles, must stop operating in inclement weather. They did not say whether either truck was a double or describe conditions at the time.

Under state regulations, inclement weather means fog, rain or snow that cuts visibility below 1,000 feet, wind that keeps a truck from staying in its lane, or ice, snow or freezing rain that costs it traction. The Parks Highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks is one of the routes where the state allows long combination vehicles.

Less than three weeks earlier, on Oct. 13, an overturned commercial truck closed both lanes of the Parks Highway at Mile 183, about three miles south.