These images are why ice on the roads is not a thing to attempt lightly. It’s why all sane people should stay at home, nice and safe and warm, watching TV or reading books or playing games. It’s why there is very little out there important enough to risk this happening.
Those pictures were taken January 31, 1997 in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The truck was our finally-paid-off Chevy S-10, and it was totaled. We left home to head into town to pick up a few odds and ends a couple of days after an ice storm; we were fairly sure the roads were fine—and they looked clear.
We barely got a mile or two away from the base when we fishtailed, and then rolled over.
It was not fun.
It’s also why I am very tense in our current Chevy S-10 truck, and why snow makes me white-knuckle it every time we venture out. I’d like to trade it in on something smaller, but we owe more than its trade in value and don’t want to wind up top-heavy on a car loan.
Anyway.
Dayton was hit with freezing rain today, leaving the roads coated with a nice surface of Let’s Slide Around In Our Car. Common sense suggested it would be a good time to just stay home, but people were out there on the roads, getting into accidents, their cars sliding into police cars that had stopped to help other people who had also slid off the road.
I know what most of those people were likely thinking when they left the house: it’s not that bad, the city has salted the roads, I’ll be fine, nothing will happen.
But it was that bad, the temps were too low for the salt to do much good as the roads kept re-freezing, and some things did happen to a whole lot of people. The injuries were few, thank God, but by 11 a.m. there were over 30 accidents reported. One was a semi that just glided past a guard rail and down an embankment onto an Interstate on-ramp.
People went out because they figured they could. No different than we did back in 1997.
Problem is, a whole lot of those people are now going to feel what I do every time the weather is less than perfect; every time the roads are wet or slick or splattered with snow. It’s not a good feeling.
Anyone want a 2002 Chevy S-10 in near perfect condition?
No comments:
Post a Comment