We had a thread a week or so ago about that pile-up in Michigan, and there was a debate about whether the drivers were really being careless, or the weather conditions were just unpredictable and unavoidable. After spending the last 22 hours driving in horrible conditions, I'm able to answer the question: the average driver on an American highway appears to be insane.
For various reasons I found myself traveling Sunday afternoon on I70 eastbound from St. Louis, heading for Columbus, OH. Drizzle changed to freezing drizzle changed to mixed snow and freezing rain by the time I hit Indianapolis. The winds were out of the north and just brutal, blowing the trucks all over the road, which was very slippery and slush covered. Salt trucks and plows were at work along the whole stretch. It was dark as hell and visibility was maybe a hundred to two-hundred yards in blowing snow.
Those conditions persisted, with local variations, from Indianapolis to 270 west of Columbus, where I decided to change course and take 71 north because I was following the storm east. That decision got me into a thick band of lake effect snow south of Cleveland, so no help there. I turned east on 76 and got to Youngstown, where I crashed for an hour and a half in a rest area, rose to more snow, and drove in that to I80 and as far as Lock Haven, PA before finally getting into some clear weather. It was pretty damn miserable 🙂.
So that is the experience from which I draw the following conclusions. First, the average driver of a tractor-trailer rig on American roads is batshit crazy. There were a few cautious guys trundling along at 45 with me in the right lane, but truck after truck went by at 65+. Between Indianapolis and the 270 junction at Columbus I saw four jack-knifed rigs, one of which shut the whole road down for awhile. I drove a tractor trailer for two different companies when I was eighteen and nineteen, so I don't speak from zero experience when I say it was in no way possible to drive a rig on I70 this past Sunday evening in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio at greater than 45 or 50 miles an hour and do it safely. I imagine the guys driving the slow trucks have a little gray hair like me, and one of the ways you get to live to have gray hair is by not doing stupid shit for no good reason.
Second, while I think the truckers were certainly the greater danger, the average driver of a car or SUV is little better. All the modern traction control and stability control systems make these people think they are masters of the universe, and the more expensive their fucking SUV is the more physics they think they can command. I don't care how smart your car's systems are, when there is a layer of frozen watery shit between your tires and the pavement you need to slow the hell down. I didn't count the cars that plowed trenches in the median or took out signs along that stretch of road because there were too many.
I honestly don't get it. These people zoom along at high speed in a close pack on ice and snow and the idea never once enters their minds that a little chaotic perturbation from some unknown direction could turn the whole mess into a meat grinder in 5 seconds? Do they actually have no imagination at all? Have some of these truck drivers never seen what happens when a loaded trailer gets to hump the cab you're sitting in? Have none of the car and SUV drivers never seen a truck sitting on top of a car? It happened to that guy on Youtube, sure, but some divine fucking principle means it can't happen to me.
So, anyway, next time you hear about a pile up, remember this: yes, it was idiots.
For various reasons I found myself traveling Sunday afternoon on I70 eastbound from St. Louis, heading for Columbus, OH. Drizzle changed to freezing drizzle changed to mixed snow and freezing rain by the time I hit Indianapolis. The winds were out of the north and just brutal, blowing the trucks all over the road, which was very slippery and slush covered. Salt trucks and plows were at work along the whole stretch. It was dark as hell and visibility was maybe a hundred to two-hundred yards in blowing snow.
Those conditions persisted, with local variations, from Indianapolis to 270 west of Columbus, where I decided to change course and take 71 north because I was following the storm east. That decision got me into a thick band of lake effect snow south of Cleveland, so no help there. I turned east on 76 and got to Youngstown, where I crashed for an hour and a half in a rest area, rose to more snow, and drove in that to I80 and as far as Lock Haven, PA before finally getting into some clear weather. It was pretty damn miserable 🙂.
So that is the experience from which I draw the following conclusions. First, the average driver of a tractor-trailer rig on American roads is batshit crazy. There were a few cautious guys trundling along at 45 with me in the right lane, but truck after truck went by at 65+. Between Indianapolis and the 270 junction at Columbus I saw four jack-knifed rigs, one of which shut the whole road down for awhile. I drove a tractor trailer for two different companies when I was eighteen and nineteen, so I don't speak from zero experience when I say it was in no way possible to drive a rig on I70 this past Sunday evening in Illinois, Indiana, or Ohio at greater than 45 or 50 miles an hour and do it safely. I imagine the guys driving the slow trucks have a little gray hair like me, and one of the ways you get to live to have gray hair is by not doing stupid shit for no good reason.
Second, while I think the truckers were certainly the greater danger, the average driver of a car or SUV is little better. All the modern traction control and stability control systems make these people think they are masters of the universe, and the more expensive their fucking SUV is the more physics they think they can command. I don't care how smart your car's systems are, when there is a layer of frozen watery shit between your tires and the pavement you need to slow the hell down. I didn't count the cars that plowed trenches in the median or took out signs along that stretch of road because there were too many.
I honestly don't get it. These people zoom along at high speed in a close pack on ice and snow and the idea never once enters their minds that a little chaotic perturbation from some unknown direction could turn the whole mess into a meat grinder in 5 seconds? Do they actually have no imagination at all? Have some of these truck drivers never seen what happens when a loaded trailer gets to hump the cab you're sitting in? Have none of the car and SUV drivers never seen a truck sitting on top of a car? It happened to that guy on Youtube, sure, but some divine fucking principle means it can't happen to me.
So, anyway, next time you hear about a pile up, remember this: yes, it was idiots.
