For an area that sees enough foggy days every year that at least some drivers could be expected to be experienced with the condition, too many people don't seem to have any clue of what to do. Instead, a terrifying number blunder about the roads as if the sun were shining and everything was hunky-dory.
Thursday morning, for example, when a pearl gray gauzy fog clung to the ground, too many drivers sped up rather than slowed down, and almost as many drove without using their lights - as turned them on.
Wake up.
If you are not interested in saving yourself, at least give the rest of us a break.
Here is a list of safe driving tips, from weather.com:
Driving in fog is a dangerous business, partly because driving through it creates the illusion of slower motion. Keep an eye on the speedometer, you may be going faster than you think. Drive at a reduced rate of speed in any case. Be prepared for the unexpected. Avoid becoming the unexpected yourself -- do not pass lines of cars.
Other drivers and pedestrians need to know where you are. Turn on your lights. Use the low beam only. The high beam will only reflect back off the fog at you, making it even harder to see.
Tail lights are essential to following drivers. Without them a vehicle suddenly looms out of the mist, an indistinct shadow, difficult to judge.
With little visibility, sound becomes important, especially when blending into traffic or entering a road. Open a window and listen -- there might be one of those dark cars bearing down on you.
Use the white painted line marking the right edge of the road as a guide.
If you are lost, stalled or otherwise in trouble, do not stop on a highway or busy road. Get off the road, get out of the car and stand a distance away. In this case the vehicle's lights should be turned off, especially the tail lights, because drivers tend to line up on them.
Finally, be patient. Fog is a unique climatic condition. It burns off as the sun rises.
In fact, while potentially life threatening, fog is not the danger to drivers that wet roads and rain are. Twenty-four percent of all accidents are weather related, only 3 percent of weather related crashes were the result of fog.
Still, according to fhwa.dot.gov that 3 percent amounts to an average of 38,000 crashes and 600 deaths a year.
The point is -- the next time the fog falls, and you're speeding down U. S. 27 with less than a quarter mile of visibility, remember the foggy 100 car crash in Beaumont, Texas
Thanksgiving 2012. Two died, 120 were injured.
Thursday, January 03, 2013 - www.newssun.com/edt-010413