Why don't we slow down?

Multi-vehicle pile ups. We should avoid this happening.

Every winter brings several reports of massive pile ups, sometimes of more than one hundred vehicles. I live in a warm-ish part of the country so the only weather inspired conditions that might lead to massive pile ups is torrential rain. However, I always have to wonder whether extreme weather conditons makes drivers lose our minds.

I have driven in some conditions that scared me to death, but I always slow down, but that in itself can be a cause of  perhaps the first crash in a series. My first exposure was in Toronto during a blizzard. I was so unnerved I pulled off the road at the first motel I came to and fortunately they had a room available where I stayed until the weather cleared.

The problem was that other drivers carried on as though it were a bright and clear day. That fact was that you really couldn't see where you were going, they were just hoping all would be well. I guess their thinking was that they had a long way to go to get to their destination, so they had to keep up their speed. Then, of course, inevitably, they crash into the pileup and fail to get to their destination for days, if at all.

People who live in areas where ice and snow and flooding are normal hazards should also know when to venture out onto the roads, and when not to, and if they have to do so, they will know that if the roads are icy you will slip and slide. It simply doesn't make sense to put your car and other people at risk. YouTube has several videos of cars that slip down some really steep hills. What were the drivers doing there in the first place?

I'm not going to spend too much time dwelling on this topic because the solution to avoiding being part of massive car pile ups is obvious. Time to use common sense and stay out of trouble.

Copyright (c) 2014  Eugene Carmichael