A hearse overturned on a German motorway Wednesday, shattering the coffin and ejecting the corpse onto the tarmac along with a bag of coffin nails that brought traffic to a standstill, authorities said.

"The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and yanked the steering wheel round when he woke up," said Jens O'Brien, spokesman for the regional government in Duesseldorf, western Germany.

"There were nails strewn over 50 meters and the corpse fell out onto the ground."

The A40 motorway was closed for an hour and there was a 4-mile back-up as police collected the coffin nails and took the corpse away.

The hearse had not been driving to a funeral but had been transporting the body from Wuerzburg in southern Germany. The undertaker was slightly hurt.

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