From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Why do people drive when they can't see?
Message-ID: <gqka9u4j65o2dsfmpmvt7gmb25utqgi4ui@4ax.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 21:29:48 -0500

On Fri, 15 Mar 2002 09:42:56 -0700, Crew_Darey <> wrote:

>Several people dead in a Georgia chain-reaction
>collision as people drove in heavy fog.  Eyewitnesses
>said that visibility was non-existant.  Yet motorists,
>including professional transport truck drivers kept
>driving and crashing into each other.
>
>We hear about these multi-vehicle colisions
>every year, yet people don't seem to learn.
>Why do they drive when there is no visibility?

What I'm wondering is why people like you criticize from a distance -
especially when you know nothing of the situation.

That stretch of road is near home and I've driven it many times.  It
is swampy around there and fog collects in the bottoms when the air is
perfectly clear all around.  It is like driving into a wall.  Given
that only you and Superman can see so far beyond their headlights that
they can see the wall coming in time to get off the roadway while
still in the clear, most people find themselves driving into it at
highway speed.  Once in, the choices aren't attractive.  One can slow
down, whereupon the guy behind you who made a slightly different speed
decision will rear and you.  You can continue at speed, whereupon
you'll hit someone who panicked and stopped.  I try to pull off all
the way to the right of the paved shoulder onto the grass and stop.
But there are half mile sections where one cannot pull off because of
guard rails.  Pulling off to the shoulder isn't enough because others
try to pull over to the shoulder and drive slowly instead of stopping.

That this fog happens there fairly often, yet this is the first
serious accident, one could also attribute this to "shit happens".

John