United States 100 - car pile up near Fort Worth, TX

[Zachowon]

Fort Worth 100-vehicle pileup leaves at least 6 dead, multiple people injured: officials

Icy conditions in Texas led to a massive pile-up on Interstate 35W in Fort Worth on Thursday morning and prompted authorities to urge residents to stay home.

www.foxnews.com

Huge crash happend in TX. 6 dead 68 injured, Most news sites made articles but did not air much of it iirc

 

[Cherico]

holy crap everything is bigger in texas

 

[Rocinante]

Yeah they don't have infrastructure to deal with snowy roads, and they don't have the experience driving in snowy roads.

Throw some snow into their mix and it's a shit show.

Reminds me of traveling to North Carolina a few years ago. I'm from the "snow belt." They were pretty much shutting their state down over what we would call a light snow...but it made sense, the roads were Absolute shit and they had about enough salt around to melt everything and then have it re-freeze as just a solid layer of ice everywhere.

A little snow without snow removal infrastructure causes mayhem

 

[Mimas]

Yeah, I'm very glad that my employer has decided to delay our 630am to a much more reasonable 830am. The road to work already has an accident once a week or so. Dealing with black ice in the dark is a recipe for disaster.

Most people here in San Antonio don't have experience with this much ice. I've driven in this stuff before, since my family has vacationed in Colorado and New Mexico, but I still don't like driving in it.

 

[Zachowon]

TX has gotten a lot of Ice and Snow, more then normal. They had a lot like 5 years ago, but not this bad

 

[Rocinante]

Yeah, I'm very glad that my employer has decided to delay our 630am to a much more reasonable 830am. The road to work already has an accident once a week or so. Dealing with black ice in the dark is a recipe for disaster.

Most people here in San Antonio don't have experience with this much ice. I've driven in this stuff before, since my family has vacationed in Colorado and New Mexico, but I still don't like driving in it.

Drive slow, under 45, lower if it's really bad. leave a lot of space between yourself and the person in front of you.

And if you start sliding, do not over correct when spinning the wheel. Do not turn away from the slide, do not use your brakes.

Turn slightly into the slide (turn slightly the same direction that your back end is sliding into) and DO NOT over correct, stay calm, it's a small adjustment.

 

[LordsFire]

Drive slow, under 45, lower if it's really bad. leave a lot of space between yourself and the person in front of you.

And if you start sliding, do not over correct when spinning the wheel. Do not turn away from the slide, do not use your brakes.

Turn slightly into the slide (turn slightly the same direction that your back end is sliding into) and DO NOT over correct, stay calm, it's a small adjustment.

Expanding on sliding:

If you have front-wheel-drive this changes somewhat. If you have very good skill at keeping your wheels pointed exactly where you want them, and the road directly in front of you is clear for a goodly distance, you try to keep your wheels pointed exactly in the direction you want to be going, and gun the engine.

Do not try this if you are not confident of your ability to correct quickly.

If it works correctly, you'll 'drag' your car back into the correct alignment; this is something I've succeeded at before multiple times, but I've been an ice/snow driver for a long time, and had practice at low speed (20-30MPH) slides and regaining control before I managed to pull it off at 45 MPH.

Do not try this if you aren't confident in your reflexes.

And do not try it with all-wheel/4-wheel drive. It only works if you're FWD only, otherwise the 'push' from your rear tires will drive you more out of control.

 

[Bacle]

Drive slow, under 45, lower if it's really bad. leave a lot of space between yourself and the person in front of you.

And if you start sliding, do not over correct when spinning the wheel. Do not turn away from the slide, do not use your brakes.

Turn slightly into the slide (turn slightly the same direction that your back end is sliding into) and DO NOT over correct, stay calm, it's a small adjustment.

Expanding on sliding:

If you have front-wheel-drive this changes somewhat. If you have very good skill at keeping your wheels pointed exactly where you want them, and the road directly in front of you is clear for a goodly distance, you try to keep your wheels pointed exactly in the direction you want to be going, and gun the engine.

Do not try this if you are not confident of your ability to correct quickly.

If it works correctly, you'll 'drag' your car back into the correct alignment; this is something I've succeeded at before multiple times, but I've been an ice/snow driver for a long time, and had practice at low speed (20-30MPH) slides and regaining control before I managed to pull it off at 45 MPH.

Do not try this if you aren't confident in your reflexes.

And do not try it with all-wheel/4-wheel drive. It only works if you're FWD only, otherwise the 'push' from your rear tires will drive you more out of control.

Also, piece of advice for people dealing with all this; overbraking as you try to correct is almost as bad as over correcting on the wheel.

Once your tires lose traction, you're fucked and your control is gone.

 

[Robovski]

Just a general tip if you unfamiliar with snow driving, try driving in a lower gear (like 1st or 2nd) if you are in an automatic.

 

[GoldRanger]

Expanding on sliding:

If you have front-wheel-drive this changes somewhat. If you have very good skill at keeping your wheels pointed exactly where you want them, and the road directly in front of you is clear for a goodly distance, you try to keep your wheels pointed exactly in the direction you want to be going, and gun the engine.

Do not try this if you are not confident of your ability to correct quickly.

If it works correctly, you'll 'drag' your car back into the correct alignment; this is something I've succeeded at before multiple times, but I've been an ice/snow driver for a long time, and had practice at low speed (20-30MPH) slides and regaining control before I managed to pull it off at 45 MPH.

Do not try this if you aren't confident in your reflexes.

And do not try it with all-wheel/4-wheel drive. It only works if you're FWD only, otherwise the 'push' from your rear tires will drive you more out of control.

This sounds like something that shouldn't be tried on public roads at all, honestly.

 

[Rocinante]

Also, piece of advice for people dealing with all this; overbraking as you try to correct is almost as bad as over correcting on the wheel.

Once your tires lose traction, you're fucked and your control is gone.

Braking as all, as you need the wheels spinning freely to correct course.

Brakes are the worst thing you can do.

 

[Captain X]

I know some of it is from lack of experience driving in winter weather, but a lot of it is just people not caring about what the conditions are because they are late or just generally in a hurry to get to where ever they are going. Basically the same reason people speed in general. I say this because even up in the north here, we have plenty of morons who drive too fast in general, let alone in winter. The only real differences is that there are generally less big pile-ups like this with fewer fatalities, and that the morons up here like to use the rationale of "I was born up here so I can just drive on snow and ice with no problem" as opposed to whatever it is for people down south.

 

[LordsFire]

This sounds like something that shouldn't be tried on public roads at all, honestly.

Why not?

 

[GoldRanger]

Why not?

A technique that relies on killer reflexes is by definition much too dangerous for a public road.

 

[LordsFire]

A technique that relies on killer reflexes is by definition much too dangerous for a public road.

It doesn't require 'killer' reflexes by any means. It does however, require good reflexes. If you're the sort who regularly stresses when driving and are likely to freeze up, don't try it.

If you're an accomplished driver, and respond quickly to changing circumstances, it can help you regain control in otherwise unrecoverable circumstances.

 

[Bacle]

Braking as all, as you need the wheels spinning freely to correct course.

Brakes are the worst thing you can do.

Eh, slight brake taps can be useful in managing speed during those situations, particularly if you're on a hill or slope. Now if there is snow accumulation plus ice, then no brakes, just pull the foot off the gas for a second or two during the correction, and accelerate out of it, or at least that's been my experience on CO mountain roads during conditions like that.

But slamming your foot on the brakes is the worst move possible in both situations.

 

[f1onagher]

In related news, I haven't had power or running water for three days. I'm sheltering at a relative's house that has electricity, but no water. This has been the worst winter storm in my lifetime.

 

[Rocinante]

In related news, I haven't had power or running water for three days. I'm sheltering at a relative's house that has electricity, but no water. This has been the worst winter storm in my lifetime.

Stay warm! I hope they get you sorted out soon.

 

[Zachowon]

Texas, Oklahoma are having terrible winters, and a lot of the power is down cause of Green energy.

This pile up was the worst accident so far. We may be having multiple deaths reported come the end of the storm

 

[Rocinante]

Here in the snow belt we got a pretty good amount of snow, but what really got us good was the ice that rained down. Yesterday morning I had to crack my car open. It was encased in a layer of ice. Today I finally got most of the rest of the ice off. It was about an inch thick in some places.

The ground and roads were all covered in snow with a layer of ice on top.

The roads, including highways were actually far worse than texas is looking. I was fishtailing at 30mph. We were mainly going around 20-30 with a lot of distance between cars. Even then there were several accidents.

But...we have the road maintenance infrastructure and driving experience, we were up and running the next day. But we did get slammed pretty hard here too.