Did you happen to catch the news clip of that tanker on flames on the freeway in California? Here’s the story and how telecommuting is being encouraged to ease traffic and congestion..

Telecommuting Eases Strain of San Francisco Freeway Fiasco.

After an accident destroyed a vital portion of highway in the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this week, officials expected nothing short of a region-wide traffic nightmare. The reality, though, was not quite that bad, thanks in part to many area companies’ liberal telecommuting policies. Proponents of working at home say such policies enhance flexibility for a business.

The first business day after a major highway collapsed could have been a snarl of traffic jams, detours and road blocks for Victor Cousins, a Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) Latest News about Sun Microsystems employee who usually carpools into San Francisco from his Oakland, Calif., apartment.

Instead, Cousins bypassed the crumpled stretch of road and participated in conference calls from his home office, without changing out of his basketball shorts.

“I avoided the chaos this morning,” said Cousins, 30, a human resources business partner at Sun. “From what I’m hearing, it could be six months or more of problems. I absolutely know this will change my patterns and I’ll be working from home a lot more often.”

Read the entire telecommuting article here.