It could’ve been worse. It could have been a truck carrying a huge load of your grandmother’s signature, made-from-scratch, super special mashed potatoes. But still, we should pour one out in remembrance of the load of instant mashed potatoes that the world lost during a recent truck accident.

No one was injured in an accident with a truck carrying its load of liquid instant potatoes in England over the weekend, though the resulting spillage did cause unsafe driving conditions, reports The York Press (h/t to Gawker).

“Instant mash is covering the road and cars have skidded as a result of the mash swelling up,” a North Yorkshire police spokesperson said.

A witness said it looked like the truck was one made for corn or wheat, but it had perhapss been converted to carry a thick liquid.

“It just came over the blind crest of the road and had to hit the brakes as we were all stopped as there was a tractor on the road about a mile in front going very slowly,” he explained, adding “When he braked hard the mash went forward and over the front of the trailer on to the tractor unit.”

Police closed the road in both directions, and the local fire and rescue service was called in to eat — err, help clean the road of the mess. Eventually, crews used freezing chemicals on the mash that remained and high-powered hoses to help clear it, after about four hours of backups on the road.

Now is the time to remind all of your grandmothers/grandfathers/talented in-laws who can’t make anything else that well not to ship massive quantities of mashed potatoes in trucks that aren’t meant for it. Because if the loss of instant mashed potatoes is causing this feeling in my heart, I don’t know what would happen if homemade potatoes were involved.

Instant mash spill blocks A64 [The York Press]

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