Sighting in Toulouse, December 28, 2012

At about 9:45 p.m., a witness was driving at night on the A61 motorway, near the Toulouse-sud rest area, when a stationary, very close light phenomenon caught their attention. For 20 to 30 seconds, they saw two horizontal white lights at very low altitude, followed by a central white headlight that lit up the ground. These lights went out and were replaced by six to eight rectangular spots that flashed in turn yellow and orange.

The witness stopped at a service station, but trees blocked the view of the phenomenon. The next day they went back to the site, visited the gendarmerie in Muret and wrote to GEIPAN. Although the motorway was very busy that evening, no other testimony was collected, and the search for additional witnesses turned up nothing, even though the phenomenon described was fairly spectacular.

GEIPAN considered the witness sincere and the account relatively precise, but unique. The sighting was very brief and took place from a moving car, at night, on a heavily congested motorway. The most likely explanation was reflections of headlights on the car's windows, combined with a misperception or misinterpretation, which does not call the witness's credibility into question. The case was classified B (probably identified).