The phone has been ringing off the hook

Kristján Kristjánsson, manager at Árekstur.is (traffic collision helpline), says the phone has been ringing off the hook for about three hours. He asks people to drive carefully.

"It got absolutely crazy in the afternoon," Kristjánsson says in an interview with a mbl.is reporter.

Around 30 announcements in three hours

The weather changes quickly, but the southerly winds that have been prevailing all over the country for the past few days gave way to the northerly winds last night, and therefore snow and ice in many places.

Yellow and orange warnings are in effect throughout the country, and driving conditions are therefore difficult in many places.

"It just changed very quickly, because everything went crazy there in two or three hours. The phone just didn't stop," Kristjánsson says, but he believes that around 20-30 notifications were received at that time.

Lost control of the car

When asked, Kristjánsson says that people are usually careful when the forecast is bad, and therefore bad weather is not necessarily an indicator of a lot of collisions. However, the black ice on the road surprised many people - even himself.

"I was driving on Reykjanesbraut Road by Ikea and I didn't see anything and lost control of the car. I had no idea how much ice had formed in such a short time," he says.

He says that the number of notifications has started to decrease, but that he does not think it is unlikely that they will start to increase again later in the afternoon when people go home from work. He therefore asked people to drive slowly and carefully and beware of icy roads.