An eight car pile-up on Durban's notorious M7 highway brought Tuesday morning traffic to a standstill.

Advanced life support paramedic Garrith Jamieson said the vehicles were all headed from Pinetown towards the N2 freeway when the accident occurred.

"The rainy weather has caused absolute mayhem on multiple roads, the biggest of the collisions being on the M7, between Bellville and the N2 bridge, at about 7.30am," he said.

"Paramedics arrived on the scene to find eight vehicles were severely damaged. Five people had sustained injuries and were stabilised at the scene before being transported to hospital."

Jamieson said a short distance away a truck lost control on the same road and went through the centre median.

"Fortunately, there were no injuries."

TimesLIVE