Black Ice to Blame in Rt. 97 Crashes

The heavy rain on Sunday night and falling temperatures created black ice, which was to blame for two crashes along a section of Route 97 on Monday morning.

One crash was in Wenham, just north of the Beverly line, and the other was in Beverly just south of the Wenham town line.

Nobody was seriously injured in either crash.

The first crash happened at about 6:30 p.m. near LP Henderson Road in Beverly. The female driver was taken by ambulance to the hospital to be checked for minor injuries after her Hyundai Sonata spun out and went about 20 feet down an embankment.

Later, at about 8 a.m., a driver crashed her Toyota Prius into a tree and it spun and ended in the front yard of a home on Route 97, between Burnham Road and the Beverly line. The female driver was OK.
 
Workers for Big Jim's Towing from Beverly pulled both cars back on the road and towed them away. In addition to the two crashes on Route 97, they said they had handled two other crashes on Tuesday morning caused by the ice.