[cripplecreek]

Piling in full tilt in bad weather.

Traction control and 4 wheel drive aren’t magic.

[catfish1957]

Reason No. 3,498 I live in the south.

[VanDeKoik]

Utterly amazing to see people driving so fast without any care as to what could be ahead.

I hope no one expects us to feel sorry for them.

[Hot Tabasco]

The visibility didn't seem bad enough that they couldn't have slowed down in time..........But then again, they were probably on bare ice without realizing it due to the snow fall.....

Nevertheless, it was pretty horrific to watch

[babygene]

You could make n interesting analogy with football player and drivers...

When you load a high school athlete on the football field with body armor helmets etc., it only prevents serious injuries for a little while. After the players become accustom to their new supper human powers, they just run faster and hit each other harder and the gains are gone.

Same thing with drivers. Put all kinds of safety equipment in a car; antilock brakes, airbags etc., and over time drivers will respond by modifying their driving habits. Driving faster, following too close and overall riskier driving.

Perhaps it’s not a one to one correlation, but it’s there...

[MomwithHope]

Officially up to 193 vehicles now 76 were semis.

[BobL]

“Traction control and 4 wheel drive aren’t magic.”

They’ve documented that people drive faster in dangerous conditions, knowing that they have safety devices, like Anti-Lock Brakes. There may have been some improvement with these safety systems, but not nearly as much as expected.

[Herzo61]

I’ve been in a white-out on I-75. What do you do? If you keep going with less than 50 foot visibility, you don’t know what you are going to run into. If you pull over and stop, you are asking to be part of an accident.
About all I could do was to pull to the right lane, slow to about 40 mph (from 70), turn on my flashers and hope everything worked out.
Maybe I got lucky, but we made it through.

[cuban leaf]

I don't really understand this sort of thing. The problem here was not snow. It was fog. You shouldn't drive faster than how far you can see down the road.

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:

[Rodamala]

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”).