Posted on 01/11/2015 5:20:25 AM PST by CHICAGOFARMER
WATCH SCARY 150 CAR PILE UP VIDEO BATTLE CREEK MICHIGAN
LOL Irritating isn’t it.
Yes, driving in snow and driving on ice are two different things. Sometimes the line when it crosses over from one to the other is hard to detect.
We had a winter storm come through last week in the Twin Cities that resulted in 855 crashes and 610 spin outs. According to this article, that’s four times more than the usual amount of accidents with a storm. http://kstp.com/article/stories/S3671063.shtml?cat=3
People need to slow down, even if it is ‘just’ snow.
Four years ago I helped my daughter move from eastern South Dakota to Evanston WY. I drove a Uhaul truck pulling a large UHaul trailer. It was in January and when we left her home, it was in the 20's BELOW ZERO and was a balmy 20 something in Evanston when we got their two days later.
I averaged 65 the whole trip and this includes driving through a ground blizzard (wind whips up ground snow so it looks like a blizzard but it's not really snowing). The rules are simple: If the wind is not too strong and the road is straight AND YOU CAN SEE DOWN THE ROAD, only a deer walking out in front of you is dangerous.
Took this picture on the trip. We were bookin' when I took it:
20 years ago such accidents were fairly rare in the north.
That’s a pet peeve of mine. The biggest one, however, is when TV’s are set to “wide screen” mode. I HATE when I go to a place and they have a football or basketball game on and there are black bars on the bottom and top of the screen but the people a wide, the basketball is an elipse, etc.
Wow! I cant believe how fast those people were driving! No way in those conditions could they stop.
there was a study done years ago about driving in blinding snow or fog...
without external references, your brain cannot tell how fast you are actually going...
subsequently, if you do not watch your speedometer, your mind actually convinces you that you are driving too slow...
hence, you speed..
check it out sometime if you are in fog, it is not only interesting, but true..
if driving in these conditions, trust your speedometer and not your instincts...
“... have safety devices, like Anti-Lock Brakes.”
And then reality sets in as you hit the brake pedal...and it starts “chattering” at you while you’re tires slide across the ice without hardly any speed reduction at all.
That’s a pucker moment...
Combined with the image stabilization, it's great. You can also use it for still photos.
I know the feeling. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Wife and I took a trip from IL to Idaho 10 years ago. We experienced the absolutely worse weather conditions ever. Not exaggerating. All in one trip.
First Black Ice in ND. Came up on it and the backend kicks out with no warning. I-94 was just fine...until it wasn’t. Caught it and got it straight. 1/2 mile up cars all over the HWY and ditches. The next 4 hours you could not drive faster than 10mph. 1 mph over and your vehicle would slide off the road. You knew it was bad because even the truck drivers pulled off and called it a night. After 4 hours we pulled off in Bismarck. I got out of the truck and felt that I aged 40 years.
Coming home we battled icy mountain roads, 75 mph winds in WY, that was OK but the killer was fog in IA that night. I could not believe how thick it was. Thought we were goners because I could barely see the line of the HWY to my right. No visibility - there could have been the Titanic 20 feet in front of me and I would have never known. All you do is pray to see an exit because pulling to the side is just as deadly as moving forward.
I’ve seen busses do that before. Driving too fast for conditions. Ticks me off putting peoples lives in danger.
I distinctly recall G. Gordon Liddy on his radio show explaining that it is not speed that kills... it is differential speed. Stiil, for any given road condition you should be travelling no faster than the speed from which you can safely stop within half the sight distance to an stopped obstruction (that railroader speak for “restricted speed”).
Yes, the dreaded Vertical Video Virus strikes again!
I am not so certain that Citizen’s Band is virtually non-existant... I mean they are still selling CB radio sets at all the truckstops. I grew up within radio range of 2 truckstops... was actually listening the night of the big gas explosion in Edison NJ which was 50 miles away and as the truckers crested the grade on the interstate, you shoulda heard the chatter of the eastbounds... everyone was saying it was everything from an atom bomb to a plane crash.
Ford is now making aluminum bodied F-150s.
That “tilt to zoom” feature sounds awesome... the thing is I can never send videos via email or text because the file size is too big... I don’t take videos in low res.
Heavier cars stop faster? I think someone needs to take a physics class. I guess those semis can stop on a dime. My thought is there were way fewer 4WD vehicles back then, so people drove more carefully.
Heavier cars stop faster on snow....
Stopping on snow is more about the tire/ground interface than anything else. Obviously the brake has way more torque than necessary to lock the wheel with such a low coefficient.
In 2010 I had to drive across Minnesota in order to see my mother at Mayo Clinic down in Rochester...she was in very serious condition.
I was trying to stay ahead of a blizzard. Rented a room in Fargo at 7 pm (I had come from Idaho) hoping for a few hours sleep. Checked out at 10 pm as the wind was picking up.
For some hours I was alone on the Interstate. That was weird enough. Then at four or five in the morning I hit the outskirts of Minneapolis and soon found myself in the middle of trucks, cars, you name it, all going 70 mph in about 50 feet of visibility.
I couldn't see the roadside or the centerline. I couldn't stop, couldn't slow down, at times I was in total whiteout, gripping the wheel so hard my arms ached. Couldn't really see anything but the taillights just ahead of me and the headlights in my back window.
I was praying out loud and cursing the lunatic drivers in alternate breaths.
At a certain point the traffic vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. I drove through a seemingly deserted Minneapolis, snow a foot high in the roadways, no one around.
I made it to the highway into Rochester just before they closed the roads down. I was as fortunate as could be.
It was the night the Humphrey Dome collapsed.
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