AUSTINTOWN — A rainy Thursday started with a bang for the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and never really let up.

By 2 p.m., troopers from the Canfield Post had responded to at least five crashes, said Sgt. Patrick Abel.

The main snarl occurred on Interstate 80 about 6:30 a.m.

It began when an SUV driven by Thomario Rollins of Bloomfield, Connecticut, rear-ended a tractor-trailer heading eastbound, between state Route 46 and state Route 11 southbound.

Abel said Rollins, who was traveling with another adult and a 3-year-old child, told troopers the traffic had slowed to a crawl.

Abel said OSHP had received no reports of slowed traffic along that stretch before the crash, and it seems likely that Rollins was either distracted or had nodded off. Rollins told troopers he looked up to see the back of the trailer in front of him just before the crash.

Abel said the underride guard bar on the back of the trailer broke off and was halfway into the SUV’s engine compartment.

“It was good to see that the bar did its job,” Abel said. “If it had not been there and they’d gone under the trailer, all three of them would have been seriously injured or even killed.”

Abel said it was unlikely the semi driver even knew he had been hit and the truck has not been located.

The disabled SUV, straddling the line between the left and middle lanes, caught fire but the occupants were able to get out and get to the side of the road.

Shortly after they exited the vehicle, Abel said, a pickup truck traveling eastbound in the left lane approached the spot where the SUV sat disabled, and failed to observe that other traffic was going around it. Abel said a semi then cut off the pickup, causing it to swerve to the right and strike the back of the SUV. The pickup truck swerved off the right side of the road and was disabled.

Rollins and his passengers all sustained minor injuries from rear-ending the semi, and were taken to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. The pickup driver was unharmed, Abel said.

Traffic was reduced to one lane for at least an hour, Abel said.

Abel said Rollins was cited for the crash and failing to maintain assured clear distance ahead.

He said that while wet roads did not play a part in this morning’s incident, they were a factor in other crashes, along with speed.

In the early afternoon, troopers were still working on crashes, including one on Interstate 680. Abel said there was another on Route 11 near Mahoning Avenue, another elsewhere on Route 11, and another on Interstate 80.

He said they were mostly due to drivers going too fast on wet roads, and at least a few of them ended with cars crashing into guardrails.

“If people would slow down they’d help to prevent a lot of this,” Abel said.