Dumb things passenger vehicles do

I'll certainly allow for the drunk factor. It would explain the mindless driving behavior.

 

Back in February on this same stretch we were fueling in Grants, NM on a cold morning, saw a few snowflakes drifting about and noticed some of the trucks had a lot of snow in their grills. Talked to a few fellow truckers and found out it was snowing hard and starting to stick on the way to Gallup.

About halfway to Gallup the left lane is started to get drifted over and has had less traffic so even the tire tracks are slightly covered over. The drifts on the left lane were up to about 2-3 inches, the right lane tire tracks were relatively clear. Visibility was about 200 to 300 yards.

Then we came upon a semi that was jackknifed hard down off to the right, then about 300 yards later a Fedex combo with a heavily damaged front fender and a dump truck combo were parked on the right and left shoulders of the eastbound lanes and traffic eastbound was crawling through them, then just behind the Fedex truck there was a Ford Explorer (I think) that was upside down in the median. The thing was, the Explorer was bent 90º from its bottom, like it had impacted on the bottom.

Later I had a chance to talk with a trucker that witnessed and nearly became involved in this mayhem. He was traveling WB at about 45 mph in the right lane. Another truck passed him going about 47-48 mph. It was a kind of dicey pass because of all the snow getting kicked up and the little snowdrifts causing problems for the passing trucker. Finally he had the pass and came back over to the right lane in front of the witnesses truck...

... just then the Explorer came rocketing through going at least 70 mph, starting fishtailing from the snowdrifts, then swerved right in front of the truck that had just passed the witness, causing that truck to catch his right tractor wheels in the deep snow on the shoulder and jack knife off to the right. The Explorer seemed to accelerate, fishtailed wildly, then over corrected and caught the deep snow in the median, spun in the air and impacted the Fedex truck from the bottom side.

The Explorer was bent so much my first impression when I saw it upside down in the median was that it was a convertible. No way anyone survived that.

I guess if you're driving an SUV it doesn't make you impervious to snowy road conditions....