This is what happens when you don't SLOW DOWN in bad winter conditions

No worries. This deal went down about 3.5 miles from my office. Before was moved to office duty I ran that stretch of 94 regularly. I've sat in many a backup on that stretch of road. I can count the number of times I got a heads up on the radio before I ran up one of those backups on one hand with fingers left over.

I met one of the drivers involved in this deal Friday afternoon at one of the maintenance shops I use. According to him, visibility was up and down depending on where you were. You could see fairly well and then suddenly you couldn't. Definitely the kind of conditions that would cause the smart money to slow the eff down. But these whiteouts were also lake effect related. Which means its very likely that the people coming coming from the East in the westbound lane may very well not have run into any low visibility until they got to the spot where those clips were shot.

Any like I said, the smart money was going slow and the driver I was talking to was in the smart money group. He was taking it easy heading east running behind another guy who was taking it easy. A local P&D (I won't name names) blew by him a mile or two earlier. From what he could tell, the P&D ran up on a pickup also going slow and had nowhere to go. They hit, he jeckknifed.

The guy I was talking to and the truck in front of him got stopped without incident. Then they started popping out of the whiteout behind him. A couple cars got around his right side without making contact as they stopped. Another truck got around his left without contact. Then another truck ran up with nowhere to go and went into his ICC bar, pushed him into the guy in front of him.

He said he sat in his truck for about 5 minutes feeling the impacts transmitting through the pack as vehicles kept piling up behind him. He said DOT was already stopped right near where the first accident happened so officers were on scene right from the get go. He also said that by the time the impacts stopped, thus making it safe for him to get out of his truck, the fire was already going further back in the pack.

Officers were just starting to sort out the details and trying to get to the injured on the eastbound side when the same sort of chain reaction accident started happening on the westbound side. That's the video you see posted above.

So these people on the eastbound side had just escaped injury and death. Their vehicles were in a mangled pile. And some internet yahoo thinks they suck because they didn't go running a mile down the road on foot in a whiteout, cross into a median which was rapidly filling up with sliding vehicles, and wave their arms to warn drivers. I do believe that may well be the stupidest thing I've ever read on the net and I've read some mighty stupid crap on the net.

 

Someone's got to much internet time. Shouldn't you be out truckin on the ice roads?

 

That video was cringingly hard to watch. Don't know how many lives were lost, but it had to have been several.
Sadly ALL types of vehicles drivers need to slow the hell down and pay attention, in ALL conditions. Amazing how big of a hurry most people are in these days. In a hurry to go nowhere...

 

CB's r useless 98 percent of the time people don't say anything till it's too late.

All I hear on the radio is Dino get out the middle lane
Dino get out the left lane
Dino can I get your autograph
Dino are you going to give my wife back
Dino tell my kids I said hi
Dino how's Dolly
Dino how come you won't let other drivers get the driver of year award
Dino can I get an app that alerts us to your hilarious post

I got enough voices in my head. What do I need with a box that has more voices?

 

My dedicated takes me through NW IN and SW MI all week. 94, 196, 31 were hell. It's my first winter driving so I took it slow in the the white outs. Still almost lost it a few times too high winds, low viz and loss of traction @ 20 mph at some points. Got the finger more than a few times as I putted along with my hazards going from the fast movers. Guessing a couple of em ended up in this mess, hope not.

I pushed it a little hard at some points, till this mess happened. Now I'm just taking it slow. previous posters are correct about the conditions up there. Sunny sky's and clear roads for a couple miles then bam! You're cranking your defroster with the wipers going at max, leaning over the wheel too only see ten feet in front of your tractors nose. The winds whipping you back and forth and the drives are slipping. Then you come out of it after a couple miles, relax for a moment and go back into another band.

I ran all summer without a CB because I heard all the talk about them being an annoyance over being a useful tool. But I'll be getting one this week after what I've seen.

Allthebest.

 

Those conditions were not an "anomaly" at that time.... The conditions were that way all night just about from the Grass Lake scale house all the way over to the Sprinkle Rd exit where I do my turn around at our terminal there. With my loaded doubles I was only able to do 40 mph without breaking traction and sliding all over the road. The whiteout conditions were off and on the whole way as well. It was just a terrible night to be on that stretch of road. Even US 23 was pretty icy, even though on the way to Kzoo the road did APPEAR to be clear but a quick step on the accelerator proved otherwise. On the way back, the road was snow covered in addition to having the ice layer underneath. I'm thankful I came back east bound around 5:30-6:00 a.m. so I missed that mess. It was still no fun coming through there with an empty pup trailer but I slowed down and made it. I'm kind of amazed there were not more big wrecks because of the way folks were driving. Sure there were a few big trucks and 4 wheelers slid off the road here and there but no big crashes until that one.

 

It wasn't the conditions that caused this wreck it was drivers making bad decisions.

 

Read an article, the breakdown of the accident was 60 vehicles on the east bound side, 133 on the west bound side...76 of the combined vehicles were semi's.

 

Here's what some of the "elite" posters over at Zerohedge have to say about this accident:
"new IndianaJohn

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I drive along side and around these truckers every day on I 94 in Indiana. Them crazy fools are all high on biker-crank or worse, and driving hell bent for carnage. Especially thru Gary Indiana they make a bumper to bumper convoy while driving at or over the speed limit. They make it treacherous to change a lane to access your ramp.
To hell with you truckers. Bleed in a pile in the ditch you sons of satan. I'm sorry for the motorists that they take with them on their way to carnage. And don't give me no #### about a 'whiteout' either. If you can't tell what conditions that you are driving in, then get a job carrying the freight on your back."
"new IndianaJohn

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I drive the Indiana stretch of I 94 with those same ####### truckers every day.

Most truckers are high on biker-crank or worse while they are driving on top of my license plate. they are hell bent for carnage. They have no regard for life, limb, or the pursuit of happiness."
"new IndianaJohn

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I drive the Indiana stretch of I 94 with those same ####### truckers every day.

Most truckers are high on biker-crank or worse while they are driving on top of my license plate. they are hell bent for carnage. They have no regard for life, limb, or the pursuit of happiness."
"InanimateCarbonRod

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well...some of the truckers could have taken a couple (or a lot) of road flares and put them out...but that's assuming they even carry a proper emergency kit....
bottom line: people not driving appropriately for the conditions.

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Mon, 01/12/2015 - 09:38 | 5651055earnulf

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Considering the SHORT amount of time between hitting the vehicle in front of you and wondering when the next impact from behind is coming, most PEOPLE wouldn't be rummaging around in the cab, looking for the emergency kit. Most kits today also don't come with flares, but rather with "high visibility triangles". These things are about 10 pounds each and open up into a 12" sided triangle that sits on the ground, BEHIND your vehicle.
Isn't that where the oncoming, blind cars and trucks, are coming from?



I don't think you can run fast enough on snow to avoid a 60 mile per hour hunk of metal that suddenly appears 500 ft from you."

Story and comments at the link below:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-11/caught-camera-terrifying-200-car-pile-real-time

 

Gosh that's tough to watch.

I gotta say that I'm a little weary about becoming a truck driver after seeing that. I've seen wrecks before but none that bad.


Just please don't let my parents see this, they'll never let me out of the house EVER!