Woman charged after car gets stuck on 95

Trying to skirt a traffic back-up on Interstate 95 didn’t pay for a Fairfax woman.

When the 28-year-old female driver of a tan sedan tried to bail out of heavy traffic on the southbound lanes in Woodbridge she hit a ditch and got stuck after sometime after 2 p.m. Friday.

The woman used a gravel median just south of Prince William Parkway, trying to make a break for the less-congested express lanes, said Virginia State police spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

Now stuck, the woman could be seen through a Virginia Department of Transportation traffic camera sitting in her seat looking around for help, but no one stopped.

Many other drivers, who were also using the gravel median to get around the backup, passed her by.

About 2:30 p.m., a fire truck arrived on the scene and so did a Virginia State Police trooper. The woman got out of the car and greeted them.

Five minutes later the fire truck drove off and then tow truck arrived. The operator attached a cable to the car and pulled it out of the ditch to a point where it could be driven again.

After exchanging what appeared to be paperwork with the state trooper, the woman then got back into her car and started it. The trooper stopped the already slow-moving traffic on I-95 and the driver got back onto the highway.

No one was injured and the woman is now charged with reckless driving after she admitted trying to illegally cut through the median to get to the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, said Geller.

It all happened before the HOV restrictions took effect at 3:30 p.m., when all vehicles must have three or more occupant to use the lanes.

Information from insidenova.com.