A 57-year-old truck dri­ver was de­tained Thurs­day af­ter loads of pota­toes were found spilled on a key bridge link­ing two Dan­ish is­lands, po­lice have said. The dri­ver was held on sus­pi­cion of caus­ing reck­less en­dan­ger­ment to life.

A first spill was re­port­ed on the west­bound side of the Store­baelt bridge at 6.35 a.m. (0435 GMT), po­lice spokesman Ken­neth Taan­quist said. The bridge con­nects the is­land where the cap­i­tal, Copen­hagen, is lo­cat­ed to the rest of Den­mark.

A sim­i­lar in­ci­dent hap­pened on the east­bound side a short time lat­er, Tan­quist added.

”It looks weird,” he said. “We are work­ing on two hy­pothe­ses: it is ei­ther an ac­ci­dent or it is some­thing that has been done de­lib­er­ate­ly.”

Po­lice said the roads had be­come slip­pery and urged dri­vers to dri­ve slow­ly. Ac­cord­ing to the Dan­ish Road Di­rec­torate, lines of ve­hi­cles were re­port­ed on ei­ther side of the rough­ly 18-kilo­me­ter (11 .2 miles) bridge and tun­nel link be­tween the is­lands of Fu­nen, where Odense — Den­mark’s third largest city — is lo­cat­ed, and Zealand, where Copen­hagen sits.

A third in­ci­dent of pota­toes on the road was re­port­ed near the town of Kold­ing on the Jut­land penin­su­la. Kold­ing is near the Store­baelt bridge.

Dan­ish pub­lic broad­cast­er DR not­ed that the pota­to spills oc­curred on the same day as the Dan­ish par­lia­ment passed a law to tax diesel trucks trans­port­ing heavy loads.

The new mea­sure has drawn protests from truck dri­vers. In re­cent weeks, they peace­ful­ly blocked high­ways and main roads through­out the coun­try, claim­ing the tax will make their liveli­hoods un­sus­tain­able. A ma­jor­i­ty in the Dan­ish par­lia­ment ar­gue it is vi­tal as the con­tin­ued use of gas and diesel-fu­eled trucks is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly un­sus­tain­able.

As of 2025, the dri­vers of gas and diesel-fu­eled ve­hi­cles over 3.5 tons (7, 716 pounds) will be taxed 1.3 kro­ner ($0.19) per kilo­me­ter dri­ven (half a mile).

Tor­ben Dyhl Hjorth, a spokesman for the protest­ing truck­ers, said on Face­book that they “strong­ly dis­tance them­selves from to­day’s ‘stunts’.” He added that they plan protest at a lat­er stage which ”can be felt but with­out risk to peo­ple’s lives and well-be­ing.”

COPEN­HAGEN, Den­mark (AP) —