Black Ice

[Kernopelli]

I was on my way home from work last night and it was spitting rain and about 28 degrees all evening. I was aware the bridges on the interstate were ice covered and was taking great care when crossing them. I knew the vehicle behind me was a fellow DOC officer and I watched him in the rear view lose control crossing a bridge and spin off into the median. I turned around and came back on the other side of the interstate to assist. What transpired next was akin to watching a slow motion train wreck for the next 15 minutes. vehicle after vehicle came across that bridge and lost control, some spinning into the median and some gliding across the bridge against the guard rail in showers of sparks. We were busy watching traffic and warning the ones that that stopped or were stuck, to get out of their vehicles and get to a safe distance outside the guard rails because more vehicles would likely be piling up. Sure enough, a mini van comes across and gets completely sideways and when they hit dry pavement shot head on into the guard rail HARD. I couldn't get to them for fear of other traffic and had to stand there dodging several more cars sliding through the median. A minivan puling a Uhaul was next to hit hard and they jack-knifed and came to rest against the rail and blocking one lane, behind them was three semis, one pulling a double. The first semi crushed he minivan and put it on it's side but he was able to stay straight and clear the scene, the second semi steered right trying to avoid the van/uhaul and vaporized the uhaul before going through the guard rail and down a 45 degree embankment on his side. the third semi (pulling doubles) hit the seconds trailer and ripped through the rear of his trailer and jack-knifed into the median (straight toward me, and YES, I was already running for my life to hop the guardrail on the other side of the interstate. Fortunately, the next group of traffic stopped at the far end of the bridge and stopped/blocked traffic. The other officer and I were able to check the first van to wreck and they were OK. The van pulling the Uhaul was on its side and crushed. I kicked out the windshield and got the driver out and the other DOC officer was able to get up on the van and pry the door open and we pulled a baby, a young handicapped girl and their father out. We then slid down the embankment and was able to talk the stunned driver into climbing up and out the passenger door and climb down far enough that we could reach him and lift him to the ground, all the while, a flood of diesel was pouring across our feet and into the engine compartment. Everybody walked away.....it was nothing short of a true, God blessed miracle.
All I can say, is life is so fragile and it can be snuffed out in a matter of seconds in a horrible, destructive way. It literally looked like a war zone and obliterated everything. 12 hours later, they are still clearing the scene of wreckage. Since I witnessed all this, I was asked several times what happened and I kept trying to explain that there was a uhaul somewhere there. I started looking for it and couldn't even find the axle, just some shreds of aluminum panel is all I could find to prove it was once there.
Everybody who crashed seemed stunned that it was so slick when it just looked a little wet....a lesson we can all learn from.

 

[PILOON]

WOW!

Scary.

Only thing worst than black ice is black ice with 1 inch of fresh powder snow to hide it!

Good work, fast thinking.

 

[JDeerekid]

WOW!!!! is right. Glad everyone was ok and they all walked away. I have been at the scene of a 30 car pile up and when you really look at it, it looks like 10 cars and a bunch of metal lying around. It is definately not fun digging through heaps of metal helping people out not knowing what you will find.
I am always leary of black ice even when it is above freezing espescially going over overpasses.

 

[zzvyb6]

Believe it or not, you can quickly learn to manage driving on Black Ice covered roads. I used to help teach State Police driving courses at GM's Proving Ground that involved more than high speed and high cornering proficiency. "Black Ice" does have a low coefficient of friction but its not zero. Therefore driving within that envelope must be observed. Once you learn to sense the friction level and temperature. You can stay in control. Not a lot of maneuvering allowed but no need to spin around out of control. Biggest mistake drivers make is not knowing the signs of this and the circumstances. Having an on-board outside temperature reading, tire pressures EXACTLY equal at recommended settings, and the discipline for slow, smooth application of steering, brakes and throttle is all it takes. The best advice to take is to practice it in a parking lot, on a pond (safe, of course) or on an indoor ice skating rink. Take your kids along. Young drivers generally learn this better than older adults.

I can't help you if there are other cars and trucks losing control all around you, but you can certainly keep from being the initiator.

Just don't overreact to the imediate situation. Stay off the brakes, constant throttle, don't use cruise control, slow, small steering angles and hold the wheel VERY tight.

These same rules apply to driving in deep, rutted and packed snow. You control the vehicle, don't let it control you. There wil always be doubters of this skill, but a little practise will convince you.

 

[Ridgewalker]

Glad to hear you made it out of that mess OK. Whew!!!

You're lucky in that you were out of your car and didn't get hit. Did you hear about the kid who was in a wreck on I-70 on the Missouri river bridge near St. Charles? He got out of his car to walk off the bridge, saw a tractor trailer coming at him and jumped off the bridge so he wouldn't get creamed by the truck. They still haven't found him.

 

[Ryan03]

Working for a local higheay dept for 6 years, I have seen my share of black ice, nasty stuff. Two ways I have learned to be alerted to it, are first, watch your side mirror, when the water streams coming off the bottom of it begin to freeze and form ice cicels, the temp is dropping to near freezing and the road may begin to freeze soon, the mirrors seem to freeze before the roads due to all the constant wind hitting them. Second, pay attention to the amount of water coming of of the vehicles tires that are all around you, if the road looks wet, but you see very

little or no water coming off of the tires, BEWARE!!!!

 

[PILOON]

In my teens we were able to get my old pontiac straight 6 onto the river bay near home.
While we had loads of fun, it was probably the greatest practice session a person could ever get exposed to.

I still like a practice ice run whenever a vacant shopping mall parking lot is all iced up.
In fact ice drive/skidding has become one of my 'must do' winter practice things ASAP every year just to be ready for when I need it.

Must say however that ABS sure had me fooled the first time as I greatly would under estimate stopping distances on icy surfaces.
Seems as if each wheel say 'not me, its up to you guys' and suddenly none are braking at all.
I still prefer to pump rather than trust ABS.

Now I drive a 4x4 that has LOW so going down icy hills I do complete stop, drop in 4wd and let the engine do the braking/slowing. That gives a nice controlled deceleration that can not be duplicated with brakes.

 

[QRTRHRS]

I survived a good many nights driving on New York state and others five nights a week while still averaging good run times with a big truck, often as not with an empty behind me. Luck does play a big part because if someone goes sideways or whatever, even ten mph may be too fast.

However, when black ice is suspect, you need to approach every bridge with that mind. It also helps if you know the road. Ie; there is a time to hole up. You want your front wheels to be aimed as straight as possible. If the bridge is curved, you had better be slowed as needed. Mostly, you need to "float" your vehicle. To me, this is easier with a stick transmission but not impossible with an automatic. When you cross that bridge, the pressure on that foot pedal has to be such that you are not accelerating or backing off.

Kernopelli, Glad to hear that no one was killed. You do make a very valid point. Under any circumstances, being stopped along a busy road is dangerous. If at all possible, you need to get away even if you have to watch at a distance as someone gets hit. Once all traffic is stopped then you can do what you have to do.

 

[HarleyMan46929]

In my teens we were able to get my old pontiac straight 6 onto the river bay near home.
While we had loads of fun, it was probably the greatest practice session a person could ever get exposed to.

I still like a practice ice run whenever a vacant shopping mall parking lot is all iced up.
In fact ice drive/skidding has become one of my 'must do' winter practice things ASAP every year just to be ready for when I need it.

Must say however that ABS sure had me fooled the first time as I greatly would under estimate stopping distances on icy surfaces.
Seems as if each wheel say 'not me, its up to you guys' and suddenly none are braking at all.
I still prefer to pump rather than trust ABS.

Now I drive a 4x4 that has LOW so going down icy hills I do complete stop, drop in 4wd and let the engine do the braking/slowing. That gives a nice controlled deceleration that can not be duplicated with brakes.

Piloon, Just don't try to have fun in a parking lot in Indiana! I was showing my son and his friend how to handle a vehicle in a slide in our local park, next thing I see is the red & blue lights of the local police officer, who was sitting hidden, looking for another of my son's friends who had been doing the same thing earlier in the day. I got off with a stern warning, and the officer told me that they consider such "practice sessions" Reckless Driving, which can land you in jail, with a sizable fine!!!
I like to refer to such sessions as Wreckless Driving, with a W in front of reckless!!!

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif

 

[PILOON]

Harleyman

Wreckless Driving-LOL!

But how come they missed a nice 'cash grab?' seems today many if not all new laws simply are that!

Or politically motivated and never enforced as the number crunchers suddenly discover that it is too costly to enforce!
- example is bicycle fines, while highway codes applied to cyclists they never get enforced so kids blow all stop signs, turn against red lights and drive against traffic weaving in and out.
-In Montreal they voted a couple of million $$ for snow remouval on select bike paths!
AND those guys don't pay taxes! (road related) Now there is a lobby pushing for more snow remouval on all bike trails ! but they can't keep up with snow on our streets, never mind sidewalks.
IMHO you have to be absolutely nuts to even think of riding on 2 wheels in slush at -20 deg.
But then it is 'EKOfriendly'!

 

[firefighter9208]

Piloon, Just don't try to have fun in a parking lot in Indiana! I was showing my son and his friend how to handle a vehicle in a slide in our local park, next thing I see is the red & blue lights of the local police officer, who was sitting hidden, looking for another of my son's friends who had been doing the same thing earlier in the day. I got off with a stern warning, and the officer told me that they consider such "practice sessions" Reckless Driving, which can land you in jail, with a sizable fine!!!
I like to refer to such sessions as Wreckless Driving, with a W in front of reckless!!!

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif

You probably didn't get a ticket because the police have no jurisdiction in a private parking lot, if it was private. Now if it was a public (owned by the city or state) parking lot you got lucky. Around here if you have a wreck in a Wal-mart, etc... parking lot they won't even write it up. They give you an SR31 and you have to file it yourself.

Chris

 

[woodlandfarms]

I was a about to chime in that generally police have no jurisdiction over parking lots. Stop signs, right of ways cannot be enforced in parking lots. Ever notice that a stop sign in a box store /mall lot is not the same size as the one on the street. It is because it is not legal. Gets interesting when two cars collide if any of the participants know the law and get letigious...

YMV.

Carl

 

[Redneck in training]

In my teens we were able to get my old pontiac straight 6 onto the river bay near home.
While we had loads of fun, it was probably the greatest practice session a person could ever get exposed to.
I still like a practice ice run whenever a vacant shopping mall parking lot is all iced up.

My family used to own a lake cottage on a man made lake of about 300 ac. So every winter when the ice was more than about 5" thick we would drive cars all over the place except one spot where the water was usually only about 1 to 1.5 ft deep and the ice was always very thin there. One day somebody not familiar with the spot drove right over it and his car sank trough the ice. First we gathered wooden board and ropes and tried to pull the car back on thick ice. But the ice always broke and the car went back to water. At the end we got a tractor with long cable from nearby village. To get the car to the shore we had to break a channel in ice so the car wouldn't get damaged braking the ice. As the tractor stated pulling the car went slowly deeper and deeper, then disappeared completely and shortly after started to come up by the shore. Well we thought it was very funny and the driver had to withstand lot of teasing. To make the story short he was able, after some effort, drive the car home.

Running cars on the lake was great icy driving practice and fun but as the story above described it could be also dangerous.

 

[JRobyn]

When I was 15-16 or so, we'd visit my aunt in Minnesota over Christmas and could go drive out on the lakes. BIG lakes with lots of room to skid aplenty. Absolutely the best skid-control training possible!! As kids, we were more interested in STARTING wild skids than in stopping them, but in order to do one, you had to do the other! There was little worry of going through the ice, since on most days we did this, a good percentage of the local town's vehicles were parked out on the ice near their ice fishing huts.

In the spring, someone would get a junk car and park it out in the middle of the lake, then all the people living around the lake would place bets when it would fall through.

- Jay

 

[gemini5362]

It is interesting to note that a couple of the posters stated that all you have to do on black ice is know how to drive on it. I kind of think that there is more to it than that. At the very least tires make a difference. I am of the opinion that studded tires make a huge difference.
I have experiece on ice and have usually had no problems. Several years ago I was on my way to california for a new job assignment. There was an ice storm in Oklahoma. I saw the ice knew what it was and drove accordingly. I was on a straight stretch of road driving about 40 or less. I saw a police officer on the side of the road one lane over from me trying to help a motorist. As a precaution i decided to slow down. I took my foot off of the gas to let my car travel slower. I never touched the brakes. Next thing I know I was doing circles in the road until finally I left the road and went into a snowbank. After I got in the snow I backed up slowly and then got back on the road and proceeded to the next exit and spent the night. it does not take a lot to lose control on ice.


Interesting in the OP story about hopping over the guardrail to get out of the way. Last week there was an ice storm in my area. That afternoon or early evening they had three different cars hit three different bridges. The drivers of two of the cars evidently got out of the car and was either walking to safety or checking out the damage to the car. One of the drivers saw a car lose control and head toward him. The driver jumped over the guard rail to get out of the way. Unfortuneatly that bridge was 400 feet up in the air. The other driver they are not sure if he jumped over the guardrail to get out of the way or a car hit him and knocked him over the railing either way that bridge is 700 feet above the ground. The third driver hit one of the bridges and was not wearing a seat belt he was ejected out of his car over the guard rail. I dont know how far it was to the ground under that bridge but the results were the same. The moral of this story is if you have a wreck on a bridge because of bad weather get off of the bridge as fast as possible. and While you are getting off the bridge see how far it is to the ground in case you have to jump out of the way of another vehicle.

 

[PILOON]

Since this trend started there is a fellow that I know that has had 5 cars loose control and almost skid into his house.
He is on the outside of a curve going down hill.

Our local city workers are on a 'work to rule' kinda but not a full strike status.
So they do strictly bare minimums and stall checking by tire pressures and that sort of stuff. Our roads are a total icy, rutty mess.
Generally they are 3 ruts and you hope nobody is coming and sharing that middle one because you can't get out.
If ordered to plow street A, they will drive there with plow raised going thru maybe 10" of snow and slush.

Oh, and we have a provincial law that states that a municipality cannot be held responsible for winter road conditions. Guess it is based on the fact that snow is an act of god!

Since years back he actually had a car in his living room, he sunk 5" pipes filled with concrete as a guard rail thingy.

2 of the 5 cars are scrapped and I dont know how the others fared.

 

[Ridgewalker]

My little brother was driving home from the Paducah KY mall the day after Christmas 2 years ago after spending the day cashing in gift cards with his 8 month pregnant wife. On the way home they hit a patch of black ice and spun into the median hitting an overpass support.

Jason wasn't wearing a seatbelt and went thru the windshield right where the review mirror is (Ford Explorer) breaking his neck. His wife was thrown out the passenger door and the paramedics didn't even know she was there until she came to and started screaming, she was 75 yards away from the truck with a dent in her forehead you could stick a softball in. They took the baby as soon as they got her to the hospital and she was in a coma for a couple of weeks.

She is better today but will never be "right". The baby is just fine but will never know his dad who died on the day he was born.

It was preventable, WEAR SEATBELTS folks. Here is the last pix taken of me and my little brother, I called him Jaybird.

 

[WBWI]

Here is a dept of transportation video of black ice in action yesterday morning in Wisconsin. Temp was in the single digits. It had snowed a little overnight. Salt and calcium chloride don't work well at these temps so the moisture began to refreeze....during the morning rush hour. Watch for the semi at the end of the video

620WTMJ - Local Headlines - Video - <b>Raw Video:</b> DOT Captures Pile Up

 

[slowzuki]

That is terrible to hear what happened to your brother.

Living in NB, Canada, black ice, ice and snow etc are daily driving issues from mid October until late April.

The poster mentioned lifting his foot off the gas. Thats a common mistake in most vehicles. Some automatics have a coast feature and they can get away with it but the engine braking and even drive train drag in rear wheel drives is enough to lock your tires up.

On a straight away you can drive 50 mph + on black ice or glare ice without trouble as long as you know you need to be careful. Once you get going too fast, the force of trying to drive the car against the wind resistance will spin the tires and you will lose traction. 4wd's can go quite a bit faster as the force is spread to the front wheels too.

Big risks of this include coming up on someone going slow, and side gusts of wind. Studded tires and soft compound tires help. Soft A/S's as good as snow's when on ice. Cheap hard snows and mud tires on trucks are terrible.

Normally you'd never go this fast because of turns. As the previous poster said, you have very little traction so a patch you coasted over on a straight away will put you right in the ditch on a turn.

Your tires only have so much traction so you can use it to turn or accel/decel. If you come into an icy turn too fast, you only have one hope, that is to not accel, decel only as fast as wind resistance and make the most smooth and gradual turn the road permits.

Sometimes you get lucky and the ice is either under or over the snow outside the wheel tracks. Depending on speed, you grab a little of this with your tires as it has more traction. If you are going too fast and the snow is deep+semi soft, and you take too much of the side snow, it will grab the front tires and cause massive oversteer, or you will just loose all steering and head straight to the ditch. If it is frozen ruts you will get shoved sideways back towards the centre of the ruts.

Anyways, just a bit of the fun we have everyday.

BTW, up here the biggest black ice problems are:
1) Skim of wet snow packed onto cold road by traffic.
2) Rain onto way sub-freezing road.

The freezing rain causing black ice isn't so much an issue because everyone can see it on their car.

 

[gemini5362]

That is terrible to hear what happened to your brother.

Living in NB, Canada, black ice, ice and snow etc are daily driving issues from mid October until late April.

The poster mentioned lifting his foot off the gas. Thats a common mistake in most vehicles. Some automatics have a coast feature and they can get away with it but the engine braking and even drive train drag in rear wheel drives is enough to lock your tires up.

On a straight away you can drive 50 mph + on black ice or glare ice without trouble as long as you know you need to be careful. Once you get going too fast, the force of trying to drive the car against the wind resistance will spin the tires and you will lose traction. 4wd's can go quite a bit faster as the force is spread to the front wheels too.

Big risks of this include coming up on someone going slow, and side gusts of wind. Studded tires and soft compound tires help. Soft A/S's as good as snow's when on ice. Cheap hard snows and mud tires on trucks are terrible.

Normally you'd never go this fast because of turns. As the previous poster said, you have very little traction so a patch you coasted over on a straight away will put you right in the ditch on a turn.

Your tires only have so much traction so you can use it to turn or accel/decel. If you come into an icy turn too fast, you only have one hope, that is to not accel, decel only as fast as wind resistance and make the most smooth and gradual turn the road permits.

Sometimes you get lucky and the ice is either under or over the snow outside the wheel tracks. Depending on speed, you grab a little of this with your tires as it has more traction. If you are going too fast and the snow is deep+semi soft, and you take too much of the side snow, it will grab the front tires and cause massive oversteer, or you will just loose all steering and head straight to the ditch. If it is frozen ruts you will get shoved sideways back towards the centre of the ruts.

Anyways, just a bit of the fun we have everyday.

BTW, up here the biggest black ice problems are:
1) Skim of wet snow packed onto cold road by traffic.
2) Rain onto way sub-freezing road.

The freezing rain causing black ice isn't so much an issue because everyone can see it on their car.

good advice for driving on ice. I am aware of the problem with slowing down by letting your foot off the gas. Unfortuneatly if you get to hwere you need to slow down because of a change in driving conditions there is no good way to do it that I am aware of. To me the letting the car coast down to speed is the best option that you have. What do you recomend doing if you are driving on ice and you have to slow down. I realize that a big part of driving is not driving to fast for conditions. But things happen you need to slow down for.