The delay could have been much worse, if the first vehicle after the accident had not been a heavy-duty wrecker truck.

That doesn’t happen every day that the first vehicle behind the blockage [is a wrecker.] If it wasn’t for that, the interstate would be blocked a lot longer.

The accident happened around 11:40 a.m. and residual traffic backup was still evident during the 5 p.m. rush hour and later.

Other law enforcement agencies reported dealing with extra traffic both in the city of Bristol and on Lee Highway, which runs parallel to 81. But a dispatcher with the Washington County, Va., they hadn’t worked any wrecks on Lee Highway on Thursday afternoon because of the extra traffic.

The back-up began when Walter Barrett was almost home.

The Saltville, Va., resident had been in Texas, where he had been working and living in his trailer, But as the Halls Bottom Road Bridge, around mile marker 11, a tractor-trailer attempted to pass.

A tractor-trailer pushes a lot of wind, and so does that pickup truck. Apparently when the tractor-trailer started to pass, the airflow between [the two vehicles] was too great for the camper. It started to sway. It struck the side of the tractor-trailer, bounced to the shoulder. It struck the guardrail.

It hit the tractor-trailer again, and then the pickup truck jackknifed and hit the other guardrail on the right side of the rode and spun around.

The tractor-trailer driver stopped his rig at that point, but the driver and his truck were fine.

The camper, however, was blocking both lanes of the interstate.

It was pretty much the same width as the road It completely blocked the whole interstate.

Barrett suffered bruises and was taken to Bristol Regional Medical Center to be checked.

He was charged with reckless driving and failure to maintain control, “Even though it’s understandable, still it’s the driver’s responsibility not to let it go catawampus like that,” it was maybe 35 [feet long]. It was big, it blocked everything. 

It was the haven’t seen anything like that in a while, people need to be very careful no matter what region they lose  control  of their vehicle. it's almost always our own fault.