A mass of tomatoes scattered across a California highway made for stunning photos but commuter hell, after a truck crashed into a center divider and spilled its load across the roadway on Monday..

The truck, which was driving in the westbound lane of Highway 80 near the Bay Area city of Vacaville on Monday morning, collided with other vehicles before crashing into the center median and knocking a large load of tomatoes on to the eastbound lanes, said Jason Tyhurst, a California highway patrol officer.

The truck spilled more than 150,000 tomatoes across about 200ft of the busy interstate, Tyhurst told the New York Times, and left a pile roughly “two feet deep”.

Four vehicles traveling east skidded and crashed after driving into the mess of vegetables, Tyhurst said. Three people were taken to the hospital, and one person suffered major injuries, he added.

The tomatoes combined with oil and dirt created dangerous conditions on the road, he told the Times. “Those tomato skins, man,” Tyhurst said. “Once they hit the asphalt, it’s like walking on ice.”

Pedro Quintana, a spokesperson for California’s department of transportation (Caltrans), told the Los Angeles Times that the tomatoes had left the road slippery. Crews used street sweepers to clear the tomatoes and juice from the eastbound lanes, which reopened six hours after the crash.