I want to cover a little bit about the podcast and blog here before I get on to the topic for today. The podcast is the Politics and Guns Podcast. you can find it at http://politicsandguns.libsyn.com/webpage. If you only want to catch the first episode you can click here. The podcast is pretty much about what the title says it is, politics and guns, not exclusive to both together, but with that being the emphasis. If you feel so inclined check the podcast out. I will be straying away from the politics and guns here a little bit, because I plan on covering it there much more, but when something gets my blood boiling you will likely see some of it here as well.
Now then to the topic of the day. you might have heard recently about a huge pileup in Florida where at least 10 people died the evening of January 27th. If you have not heard the story can be found here.
So here is my thoughts of this. Yes, the people did come almost instantly into a blackout situation. There can be no mistake of that. However not one single person needed to die that night. Speaking now as a professional driver and driver trainer, the maximum safe speed that you can drive is the speed that allows you to brake the vehicle to a complete stop within the clear sight distance of the road in front of you. To put it a little more simply, do not drive faster than you can see. Sometimes that maximum safe speed is 0 mph.
Let's say you are driving down the road one fine January night, the sky is clear and although there is only a sliver of moon in the sky everything is flowing along nicely. Overhead you see that you are starting to drive under some thin wisps of fog. You can still see just fine ahead of you , so you drive on undaunted. Your headlamps catch some fog drifting across the road in front of you, and you think that it is just the same as the fog that you have been driving under. As soon as you enter the fog bank you instantly are enveloped in an inky black fog/smoke and you cannot even see your headlamps hitting the roadway. You instinctively step on the brake, which disengages the cruise control, and just as you do you slam into the back of a truck that had stopped because of an accident ahead of him.
Who is at fault here? You are. Any time you hit something that is not moving you are 100% at fault. It doesn't matter what that something is or where it is, if you were the only one moving you are at fault period.
What could have been done differently? When you notice that you are diving under mid level ground fog (the condition of wispy fog that floats about 20 feet off the surface of the roadbed) you should immediately kick the cruise control off and drive with your foot on the throttle. When you come to a fog bank, never enter the fog bank with your foot depressed on the throttle, instead coast in. This will allow you to go quickly to the brakes if you need to stop. Also if you can see that the headlights are not penetrating the fog as you come close to it brake before you enter the bank. Finally, should you be unable to see in front of the car at all, brake and take to the shoulder of the road, and move as far off of the travel lanes as is possible and then TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS! if by some chance people are able to see your tail lamps they will assume that you are on the roadbed and aim to follow you. This will cause the idiot that should have used the same care you have to drive right into your back end.
All too often, and more often in the deep south where they do not have to deal with ice as much, I see people just cruise right into a low visibility situation and not apply the brakes until they are already in dangerous ground.
So that is it for me today. As always thanks again for your time, and I'll see you down the road.
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