An unusual road accident put traffic to a complete halt today on the E6 highway outside Strömstad on the Swedish west coast.

A truck loaded with sill herring offal dropped its smelly cargo after a tailgate had opened up as the truck passed over a speed bump. The fish offal flew out of the truck and into the grill of a passing truck, causing a complete engine failure.

No one was injured, says SOS Alarm, the Swedish Emergency Service, but the Swedish road administration expects the clean-up work to take several hours.

Herring
Herring is a fairly small oily fish native to shallow parts of the North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean, including the Baltic Sea. Herring has been an important part of Swedish cuisine for thousands of years and the fish is still served year round. Herring becomes especially sough after around Christmas and Midsummer when it is served in its traditional pickled fashion and chased down with hard liquor made from grain or potatoes. Herring caught in the Baltic Sea can also be fermented for 6 to 12 months to produce surströmming. Several airlines have banned canned of surströmming on their flights, deeming the pressurized containers a safety hazard.

European Union

In December 2007, the EU commission presented their suggestion for a new law that would force car manufacturers to decrease the average carbon dioxide emissions from new cars down to 130 grams per kilometre by 2012. This draft does however come with one gigantic loop hole – the new law would only target cars weighing less than 2,610 kg (5,754 lbs). This could actually prompt car manufacturers to start building even heavier cars than today, just to avoid the new law. Another possible escape route is to make slight alterations to the cars in order to make it possible for them to be registered as light trucks. When a similar law was put into action in the United States during the 1970s, car manufacturers immediately responded by producing large quantities of SUVs that could evade the law by registering as work vehicles. The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) is now urging the EU parliament and the national governments to take action and remove these loop wholes from the final draft of the law.