[Cue jaunty music.] Spring snow and ice may cause slick or unpredictable road surfaces. Exercise caution when driving, and when you see flashing emergency lights ahead, be sure to slow to a suitable speed to allow you to stop. This will ...

... prevent you from skidding and fishtailing into the adjoining lane to avoid plowing into the stopped car ahead because you were whizzing along at way too high of a speed on an icy morning, bucko!

Oh, and don't be surprised, karmically, if another yo-yo plows into you from behind because of exactly the same doofus-like behavior.

And if someone does, don't be a complete dolt and get out of your car to inspect the damage there in the middle of the freeway, because if another driver after that doesn't use the brains God gave him, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

(No, none of this happened to/by me, but I got to watch it on the drive in this morning.)

This has been Today's Safety Tip.

Filed under :: Weather
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Wow...

A few days of warm and people lose their minds.

I was really amazed, because the pavement was wet, and I'd felt at least one little blip of slippage (indeed, I, the guy in front of me, and the guy behind me, all merged into the right-hand lane at about the same time, reducing speed).

And, up ahead, flashiing lights. Then more flashing lights, as we passed by a collision. And, up in the distance, more flashing lights on the left, and brake lights in the center and right-hand lanes ...

And here comes little hatchback (not me) swooshing along at high speed, only spotting the brake lights at the last second, and swerving and fishtailing into the slushy left-hand lane. I was sure he was going to plow into the tow truck before he got it to a stop and crawled back into the center lane.

And, about thirty seconds later, here comes the sedan, swooshing along at high speed along the center lane, straight toward the brake lights. Hell, if it hadn't been slick he would have had problems slowing down.

Bump.

(Dave nervously looks into his rear-view mirror, taps his brakes a few times to catch the attention of folks coming along behind him.)

Then station wagon owner gets out of his fender-dented-but-not-demolished car and goes around behind to see what's happened.

I hope nobody made it "three's a charm" on him.

Up on the north end of town,it was was mostly dry except for the deeply rutted bits of 36.

But, nothing like silly people to make you slow it down a bit and start paying attention to everything around you.

Margie opines, by the way, that this sort of post is a poor way to relate the tale to your wife.

My wife!?

Ahhh...

I see it now.

"Mostly dry"

"deeply Rutted"

All sorts of out of contextually goodness.

I see that Margie is off having all sorts of fun somewhere ;->

"Ahhh...

"Good ol' 36 of C, the petit cousin of 36 of D."

Actually, I think she was referring to "Hey, let me drop broad hints about traffic safety in a post she's going to read first thing in the morning but also sees that there's a "But wait, there's more ..." bit at the end, which can only lead to catastrophiznig speculations about some horrible accident I've been in." Y'know ... that sort thing.

Ahh...

Yep, nothing like uduly worring the S.O. with cryptic posting.