Traffic

A 15-car pileup made the Palmetto Expressway commute more painful than usual

A 15-car pileup on the Palmetto Expressway has cleared hours after it sent rush-hour traffic into a crawl.

The series of crashes happened in the southbound lanes along Northwest 122nd Street early Thursday morning, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

The bottleneck began shortly after 6 a.m., closing down two left lanes and one express lane, according to Total Traffic Miami.

An aerial view of the scene showed traffic backed up for miles before the big curve.

The road was cleared about two hours later and traffic went back to its normal slowness.

There were no injuries, according to Hialeah Fire Rescue.

The crash is under investigation.

Editor’s Note: This article and headline were updated to state that 15 cars were involved in the pileup. Officials originally believed the number was 14.

This story was originally published October 24, 2019 at 7:24 AM.

Michelle Marchante
Miami Herald
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.  Support my work with a digital subscription
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