Traffic Chaos as Hearse Ejects Corpse

BERLIN (Reuters) - A hearse overturned on a German motorway Wednesday, shattering the coffin and ejecting the corpse onto the tarmac along with a bag of coffin nails that brought traffic to a standstill, authorities said.



"The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and yanked the steering wheel round when he woke up," said Jens O'Brien, spokesman for the regional government in Duesseldorf, western Germany.


"There were nails strewn over 50 meters and the corpse fell out onto the ground."


The A40 motorway was closed for an hour and there was a 4-mile back-up as police collected the coffin nails and took the corpse away.


The hearse had not been driving to a funeral but had been transporting the body from Wuerzburg in southern Germany. The undertaker was slightly hurt.



:laughing :laughing :laughing :laughing

I have a similar story. Soon after high school, I found myself working as an EMT for a private service. In between event work and transports, I was on call to transport bodies to the state morgue (Yea, I've got a million stories) in an old Cadillac ambulance.

They paid by the head (I swear to God,) $10 bucks each. So the only way to make any money was to stack them up.

One New Year's Eve I had one on the cot and one on the jumpseat. I'd picked these up from PG Hospital and there was a long hill going past the Health Department back to the Parkway. On the way, the one on the jumpseat slid forward, head first, into the side door well and, well, he was pretty stiff.

The line of cars coming and going witnessed me pulling on legs through the open back door. I've always wondered what they thought.

So people who transport dead bodies are "Undertakers"? Or were the being comical in that article above? hehe.

An "Undertaker" is a person who deals with all aspects of the dead. Usually collects the body from a home. Makes it look its best for the big day and transports it to the church/crem for disposal. What are they called in the US ?

Originally posted by Nick
An "Undertaker" is a person who deals with all aspects of the dead. Usually collects the body from a home. Makes it look its best for the big day and transports it to the church/crem for disposal. What are they called in the US ? Mortician

Actually, mortician is a relatively recent term. Undertaker was the term of art well into the 1930s, I think.