Cause

Traffic on the China National Highway 110 had grown 40 percent every year in the previous several years, making the highway chronically congested. The traffic volume at the time of the incident was 60% more than the design capacity.

The cause of the traffic jam was reported to be a spike in traffic by heavy trucks heading to Beijing, along with National Highway 110's maintenance work that began five days later. The road construction which reduced the road capacity by 50% contributed heavily to the traffic jam and was not due to be completed until mid-September. Police reported that minor breakdowns and accidents were compounding the problem.

Greatly increased coal production in Inner Mongolia was transported to Beijing along this route because of the lack of railway capacity, which overloaded the highway. 602 million tons of coal were mined and transported in 2009; production was expected to rise to 730 million tons in 2010. An additional factor is efforts by overloaded trucks which lack proper paperwork for their cargo to avoid a coal quality supervision and inspection station on China National Highway 208.This china jam was of 100+km and then that day there are 5 flyovers above N. H. 110