I'm not sure if any of you were aware, but near where I live was a massive 150+ car pileup during white-out conditions on Interstate 94 yesterday (1/9/15). Both lanes of the interstate were closed, from MM 88 to 94 I believe. 1 has been confirmed dead 23 others were critically injured Here is a horrifying video of the start of it all; FOX news video and article: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/2...urfaces-of-i-94-chain-reaction-near-kalamazoo My heart and prayers go out to the families involved! Also, while crashing cars in simulators/games is fun... It's the complete opposite in real life. It's scary, expensive, and sometimes deadly. Please, take the time to remember to drive safely when you're out in the real-world! -Geo
That video makes you feel so helpless but it also raises the question. Do Americans just look over the bonnet or do they look at the road ahead?
Have you ever been in snow like that? You'd be lucky to see a quarter of a mile if that. By the time you see the cars ahead are stopped it is too late. Not much you can do about it except drive slower to begin with.
That's just terrifying. They can't even see far enough to know to slow down. That one truck that was going full speed was just awful. Hopefully everyone injured is okay.
On a highway? With what? Do you want to go stand in the middle of a highway with less than 200 meters visibility?
This is the fault of the Michigan DOT or whoever is in charge of closing these roads down. Yesterday here in western New York we were hit with a huge band of lake effect snow that caused similar conditions and a lot of highways were shut down including the I-90 from the PA line to Rochester. Back in November we had a similar storm except it brought even more snow and people ended up trapped on the highways because of how fast it was snowing. I feel bad for those people because the only thing you can do in conditions like that is drive slowly and pray nothing goes wrong. However they should have never been allowed to even be on the road in conditions like that.
Yep, I agree. The MDOT should have done something to warn drivers to "Slow Down", but even then some people would have dis-regarded the message completely. It's not the roads that are bad, it's the drivers. haha, though in Ice nothing helps. I-94 is still shut down, through those miles, as fire, ems, police, and wrecker crews clean up the huge mess. There is a load of work still to be done, especially after the 40k pounds of fireworks that were in one of the trailers exploded sending all of those cars you saw in the video go up in flames. Another truck was carrying Toxic acid.... :\ Michigan State Police say that the Interstate will be re-opened this evening at the very earliest. I think they'll have it open by tomorrow mid-day.
That's a real shame but that Truck at 0:51 is going way to fast IMO with those extremly bad weather conditions.
Jesus christ that's horrifying. I couldn't imagine being involved in that. That truck that slammed into the pile made me physically cringe.
I know, it's crazy that it just happened to involve a firework truck and a toxic spill. However if they would have closed prior to the storm and kept this from happening it would have been closed for much less time in the end. Live and learn I guess. NYDOT did in regards to closing roads prior to storms so hopefully the MDOT uses this to learn from their mistakes. Imo slow down warming are useless, they should have issued travel restrictions/bans or even just closed the roads. People will always think they have places they HAVE to be despite what the weather is like if they are not being actively stopped they will go out there and then things like this happen. Yesterday I saw traffic cams of roads that were shut and they all looked as bad or worse than this in terms of visibility. Why people were even allowed to use the highway is way beyond me.
Here in Pennsylvania, if that shit happens, we roll with it. We don't close down the highway or have huge pileups because our DOT actively plows the road. Thoughts out to all the people involved but Michigan DOT needs to get their shit together. PennDOT does better in worse conditions.
To be fair, the people are as much to blame as the DOT. If people need to be told to drive slowly and carefully in whiteout conditions, then they probably shouldnt be driving. I know that some of them were actually being careful and simply couldnt avoid being involved in the pileup, im not talking about those people, but if everybody was genuinely being careful, there wouldntve been over 100 cars smashed together. My condolences go out to the people involved in this, but please, next time you cant see when you are driving, be more careful.
Backup the hard shoulder with hazards on, job done and seen it done here in the uk. Well that was easy...
Most drivers I know take that as a sight deserving of pity, not a state of emergency. If you see someone with their hazards on, you tend more to assume that some poor schmuck got himself a flat or empty gas tank in the snow, not that there's a wall of crumpled metal hidden behind the white curtain ahead. Even while reversing, you'd have to work much harder to signal other drivers appropriately. Flares, cones, and hand signals + flashlight would be more apt. Also, it'd be of a fair bit of risk to oneself. It's become a well-known phenomenon for drivers to gawk at accidents/pullovers/stopped vehicles, and begin unconsciously steering in the direction they're looking. Do that, and you'd be setting yourself up to be abruptly and dramatically rear-ended.
Usually that's how it is here in the Buffalo area of NY but the reason things have been different this year is because of the massive storm we had in November where we saw over 7 ft of snow and caused people to become trapped on the throughways. They didn't want to take any chances with this more recent storm. While I agree they shouldn't always close the roads down and people should be more responsible while piloting 1-3 ton machines and even larger if you drive a semi but the fact is people just don't know how to drive in the US. That is why more DOTs are forced to take drastic measures because the people don't know how to drive, don't care to learn how to drive and are more concerned with anything and everything other than driving. Everyone wants/needs to drive to get places and do things but not many actually want to be driving because of this they don't pay attention to things like they should. Driving any sort of vehicle be it a plane, train, boat or car/truck you need to pay attention to everything around you and that goes triple for conditions like this. Sure it sucks to have roads closed due to weather but it's better than lives lost due to people not being responsible with their huge death machines, aka motor vehicles. Until the DMV figures out how to better train drivers I feel it is up to the DOT to close roads and keep people safe in adverse weather conditions.
