Rina Cutler, the former Philadelphia Parking Authority director and newly appointed deputy secretary for administration at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, sat at the wheel for an hour to travel the six miles or so on the westbound expressway from Center City to the City Avenue exit.
"We crawled," said Cutler, who arrived at 9 a.m. as the biennial meeting began in a conference room at the Adams Mark Hotel on City Avenue. "I was stopped so long, I was answering e-mails on my Blackberry."
The accident occurred at 6:30 a.m. State police said a tractor-trailer hit three cars and a pickup truck from behind. The pickup landed on top of one of the cars.
Cpl. John Quigg, the state police investigator, said authorities were sorting out details of the crash. It was unclear where the tractor-trailer driver, Timothy Miller, 44, of Hammonton, N.J., was going or what he was carrying at the time of the accident.
Miller was uninjured. Others involved in the crash - Lun Fang Wang, 36, and Ralph Summers, 38, both of Philadelphia - were flown to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for moderate injuries, state police said.
He said reckless-driving charges would be filed against Miller.
Contact staff writer Larry Lewis at 610-313-8004 or llewis@phillynews.com.
Inquirer staff writers Stephanie L. Arnold and Jere Downs contributed to this article.
