E17 Crash Near Lokeren Injures Three, Snarls Traffic

A serious traffic accident on the E17 motorway between Antwerp and Ghent injured three people and brought one of Flanders’ busiest corridors to a near standstill on Saturday morning, authorities said. The collision, between the junctions of Waasmunster and Lokeren in East Flanders, caused delays of more than an hour in the direction of Ghent before the roadway could be cleared.

According to the Flemish Traffic Centre, jams of nearly an hour built up quickly after the crash, with peak delays exceeding one hour and 15 minutes, as RTBF reported. Emergency services urged motorists to form an emergency corridor so that fire crews and recovery vehicles could reach the scene.

The cause of the crash was detailed by VRT NWS, which reported that a small passenger car with a Dutch licence plate apparently noticed too late that it had missed its exit and braked hard, causing the vehicle to end up partly sideways across the carriageway. A heavy BMW then struck the car in the flank. The broadcaster described the impact as “enormous.”

Three people were taken to hospital: the female driver of the BMW and her passenger, along with the male driver of the Dutch-registered car. No fatalities were reported. All of the drivers involved were subjected to drug and alcohol tests, a standard step in serious collisions in Belgium.

Major Disruption on a Key Corridor

To clear the roadway, authorities closed the motorway for about half an hour. Traffic was diverted on and off the motorway via the parallel service road at the Lokeren exit, which quickly produced a queue of more than five kilometres stretching back from the Waasmunster motorway parking area.

As The Brussels Times noted, the motorway was only partially blocked while crews worked at the scene, and the vehicles involved were being recovered as the disruption began to ease. The Flemish Traffic Centre said congestion should clear before long.

Drivers travelling from Antwerp toward Bruges or the Belgian coast were advised to avoid the E17 entirely and instead take the E34 via Zelzate.

The E17 is one of the busiest motorway corridors in Flanders, linking Antwerp with Ghent and continuing toward Kortrijk. It carries heavy commuter and freight traffic, which is why even a relatively short blockage can cascade into lengthy delays across the regional network.

Why It Matters

Saturday’s incident underscores the fragility of Flanders’ motorway network, where a single collision can ripple across a densely used corridor. The crash also highlights the role of the Flemish Traffic Centre, the regional body that monitors and communicates road conditions in the Dutch-speaking north of the country, as the primary source of official information on such disruptions.

Dutch-registered vehicles are a common sight on Belgian roads given the proximity of the two countries, and Antwerp lies close to the Dutch border. The involvement of a Dutch-plated car in the crash is a reminder of the cross-border nature of the region’s traffic.

Emergency response and recovery operations were largely completed as of Saturday morning, though residual delays persisted. No further casualties or secondary incidents were reported.

What to Watch

The focus now shifts to the extent of the injuries and the outcome of the drug and alcohol tests, which authorities have not yet disclosed. Motorists using the E17 in the coming days should still expect possible lingering disruption as cleanup concludes, while the incident feeds into a broader regional conversation about safety and congestion on Flanders’ most heavily used routes.