Traffic froze down the Beltline when over 100 cars were involved in 50 separate weather-related crashes during Tuesday morning's commute and lunch-hour rush.
""It looked like a parking lot on the Beltline,"" Madison police spokesperson Mike Hanson said.
According to police, poor road conditions and driver errors are being blamed for Tuesday's accidents, which included two 20-car pileups, a 15-car pileup and about a dozen smaller crashes.
It is not yet known how many people were injured, or to what extent.
Most of the accidents occurred between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m, when temperatures were still too low for road salt to effectively melt the ice underneath the snow, which began accumulating around 8:30 a.m.
Steve Haag, superintendent of Highway Maintenance, said maintenance units were salting and sanding the roads as soon as snow began to fall, but the frigid weather caused the melted ice to refreeze almost immediately, creating slippery roads.
Ald. Austin King, District 8, said the city did all it could in terms of salting and sanding the roads and highways and that it is ultimately the driver's decision to take to the road. When driving conditions are as icy as they were on Tuesday, he said, the best thing people can do is stay off the roads unless it is urgent.
""There's not much you can do sometimes to fight off Mother Nature,"" King said.
Hanson said drivers were not taking the dangerous conditions seriously enough. Although it seemed like a typical winter day in Wisconsin, he said, drivers were not giving enough room to cars in front of them and were driving too fast.
Haag agreed, stressing that people must use caution during rush hour on Tuesday night until the maintenance crew can get things taken care of.
""We're bracing for it and we're trying to reach out to the media and let them know that people need to slow down and use caution out here, because rush hour could be a lot worse than it was over the lunch hour,"" Hanson said.
