I-81 Crash video this morning
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Was just going to post this. Five people killed, over 20 injured. Hope no family member of our Nittany Lounge family was involved.
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I was sitting next to a girl back in the 80s at a company event. They came and got her and she never came back. Her father was in a similar accident near canton Ohio. He slid into the back of an 18 wheeler. He got out of his car to inspect the damage. Another 18 wheeler came and sandwiched him between the two. He was crushed from his waist down. The first responders let him live a while knowing when they pulled the second truck off of him he would immediately die. He called his wife. He wanted to call his kids too, his daughter was the gal sitting next to me. But his wife convinced him it would be too hard on them. He died at the scene.
i learned then you do not get out of the car until danger has passed.
i learned then you do not get out of the car until danger has passed.
When I drive to work go right by there
9 miles from here
very scary watching that
In that video one guy got out of his car and it got hit hard. Looks like he was right by the drivers door and the car spun right around him. Hoping he wasn’t hurt bad. Hard to see for sure but looks like he didn’t even get knocked off his feet.
Well, it depends. In that video, you get into the woods asap because cars are still coming .
The thing you don’t do is stand close and gawk like some of these people
Exactly. With big trucks bearing down at highway speeds the chance for serious injury or death is high, even if you stay in your car. If the car is still somewhat operational, drive to the side as far as the road, terrain and car will allow. Then when you exit, get the hell out of there to safety. The guy that lollygagged standing there is lucky to be alive.
More detail and some additional pictures and video
As we sit in here late March, the the main thing to blame for this occurring is global warming.
Normally staying in your car is the best advice, but it doesn't sound like that would have worked much better in his case. Terribly sad story. Reminds me of the story my grandfather, who drove a truck, told me about a guy who got pinned in his burning truck cab and before he died was conscious enough to ask the state trooper who responded for his gun so he could shoot himself before the fire got him.
After watching that video it is something that more people were not killed after watching those trucks crash into the back end of all of the stopped traffic. Very scary when those conditions are in full force like they were yesterday.
If the environmentalist wackos have their way, every month can be like January. I'm really looking forward to that.
Weird - that is how Mel Gibsons wife died in the movie Signs excpet she was pinned by a car against a tree by M. Night Shyamalan.
That guy needs to play the lottery. You could argue that he survived death 3 times. First his car hits a sign instead of the stopped car in front of him. So he backs up a bit after hitting the sign. He's still sitting in the car when the white car at 0:10 maintains just enough control to swerve into the ditch and miss his car. If the white car was booking, he would've been toast.
Then the car at 0:20 that was really flying hits the back of the guys car spinning it away from him. If that out of control car hits the front of the stopped car then he plows that guy over. That guys wife must've had a heart attack seeing that video!
Cat went through at least three lives. Hope he uses the rest well.
Makes one think he is here for a reason....
Anybody familiar with that stretch of highway knows it's the Bermuda Triangle of interstate highways in PA. The fog up there sometimes between Minersville and Hegins is other-worldly and I'm pretty sure there have been similar mass-casualty wrecks there due to fog. People might remember some big ones on 80 also around Loganton a few years back and also in the rock cut between Milesburg and Bellefonte maybe 15 years ago. That was a snow squall. That one was an instance where there was entrapment and fire. Not good.
I guess if you're spry enough to move and get out of your car it's a calculated risk...do you high-tail it for the woods or stay in your car and hope you don't get sardined, can't get out and then there's a fire...tough call. I'm probably bailing for the woods if able. I can get hit by a car or debris and maybe survive, maybe not but if I can't get out of my car when others around me are on fire, I'm a goner. Even if you don't die from fire, if you're lucky all the gases and smoke from all the plastics and carpeting and stuff in a vehicle are going to asphyxiate you before you get barbecued. No hard and fast rule but I'll take my chances outside the car.
I guess if you're spry enough to move and get out of your car it's a calculated risk...do you high-tail it for the woods or stay in your car and hope you don't get sardined, can't get out and then there's a fire...tough call. I'm probably bailing for the woods if able. I can get hit by a car or debris and maybe survive, maybe not but if I can't get out of my car when others around me are on fire, I'm a goner. Even if you don't die from fire, if you're lucky all the gases and smoke from all the plastics and carpeting and stuff in a vehicle are going to asphyxiate you before you get barbecued. No hard and fast rule but I'll take my chances outside the car.
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Really situational. Are you on the edge of the road or stuck in the middle? Are there enough vehicles to the oncoming traffic to protect you? Can you hear other vehicles coming? Woods to protect you or are you on an open stretch of grass?
Absolutely, this stretch and the one coming up the Spring Mountain near McAdoo are notorious for sudden weather changes such as fog, snow squalls and a change from rain to snow. There seems to be a pile up every year, but this is the worse one I can recall.
Four wheel drive jeeps and all wheel drive vehicles have given drivers a false sense of control in treacherous weather. Simply put, drivers rarely slow down as conditions deteriorate. This is so sad......yet it makes me wonder how drivers continued to travel at high speeds when visibility became zero.
Yep. Tow truck operators will tell you they pull out more SUVs than any other vehicle. And at higher ratios than just the numbers on the road.
I moved to Maryland from NEPA decades ago and have driven that same route countless times over the years. That 20-mile stretch between Tower City and Frackville in the mountains north of Harrisburg is notorious for hazardous winter driving conditions due to ice, fog, and snow squalls...or a combination thereof.
I remember one trip some years ago when the state police shut down the entire stretch between Hegins (exit 112) and Frackville due to freezing fog. The road suddenly covered with ice and cars were sliding off it everywhere. We turned around and stayed the night at a hotel north of Harrisburg, then traversed it fine the following day. However, in any season of the year, the combination of elevation and terrain lends itself to pea-soup fog when the atmospheric conditions are right.
Still, by any standard, this latest incident was horrific. Snow squalls are bad news. They seemingly arise out of nowhere and lay down 1-2 inches of snow in the space of an hour, which typically freezes on the road surface in short order due to cold temperatures and traffic impaction. What a nightmare for those people yesterday.
Dumb question... Don't truckers still use CB radios? Wouldn't they get on the radio to alert trucks behind them that there's a huge crash completely blocking the road ahead, so they could slow down ahead of time?
It happened 7 miles from my house. It snowed hard, ground covered in minutes. People traveling at highway speeds, running into glazed roads don't have a chance.
Question - was this stretch of road treated with anti- icing agents before the snow squall? Seems like it would have been a reasonable precaution to take given that snow squalls were forecast and this section of road is particularly susceptible to them.
6 dead, 24 injured, 80 vehicles involved.
Six people killed in massive crash on Interstate 81 in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
Six people killed in massive crash on Interstate 81 in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
Seems like I80 or I81 are good for one or two pile ups every winter.
Weather can change very quickly along those 2 routes. Higher volumes of traffic. Travelers who aren't familiar with the area and possible weather conditions. And stupid people.
I don't know how they prevent it though. Or at least reduce the likelihood of a pileup. Maybe more of those real time condition signs? Local radio station alerts do practically no good cause hardly anyone listens. Everyone has satellite or similar streaming services.
During conditions like this pile up, any chemical anti icing measures would be quickly overwhelmed. Just too much snow too fast.
Unfortunately, there just doesn't seem to be any easy answers.
Weather can change very quickly along those 2 routes. Higher volumes of traffic. Travelers who aren't familiar with the area and possible weather conditions. And stupid people.
I don't know how they prevent it though. Or at least reduce the likelihood of a pileup. Maybe more of those real time condition signs? Local radio station alerts do practically no good cause hardly anyone listens. Everyone has satellite or similar streaming services.
During conditions like this pile up, any chemical anti icing measures would be quickly overwhelmed. Just too much snow too fast.
Unfortunately, there just doesn't seem to be any easy answers.
Someday soon autos will have sensors detecting both traction and visibility. Soon as visibility drops it will slow cars down to reasonable speeds. Autos may also soon have transmitters notifying other vehicles of speed, distance, and closing time. They will communicate with each other and have collusion avoidance built in.
I'm sure that's all coming. Some of it is already here with auto braking and traction control, etc. I honestly can also see problems with a mix of vehicles with those high tech features and those without.
My 2020 Camry detects cars in front of me and will slow down to maintain distance when cruise control is being used. We rented a Ford Explorer last summer for our trip to NC and if you were using the built in Navigation, when you were using cruise control, if the speed limit changed, the car would slow down or speed up to maintain the speed you had set, for example if the speed limit was 65 and cruise control was set for 70, the speed would go down to 60 if the speed limit went down to 55. So the cars are getting closer.
Squalls are considerably more difficult to predict in terms of location and timing than the average standard snow event where there's typically a lot of lead time. One minute the weather seems fine. The next, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of a mini-snowstorm that blows up out of nowhere. An hour later, the sun is out again.
In these situations, the combination of low temperature, snow intensity, and lack of warning leads to Interstate driving havoc. As if all that weren't enough, in this latest terrible incident, drivers also reported what they described as fog which suddenly created zero visibility. Though I wonder if what they perceived as fog was actually very intense blowing snow.
In any case, if you look at the horrifying video that's gotten a lot of play, you get a sense of how the road conditions changed so suddenly as it shows trucks driving at apparent speed just plowing into crashed traffic. This is consistent with the testimony of another driver who said the weather seemed clear and fine...until very suddenly visibility went to zero and all hell broke loose.
At the end of the day, sometimes you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I taught six kids to drive and emphasized a handful of fairly simple rules. I told them follow these rules and you will greatly improve your odds of driving safely. Improving the odds is the best you can shoot for because no matter how good a driver you are, there may be moments when the only thing standing between you and disaster will be luck and the grace of God.
This is where the real game changer lies with autonomous cars IMO. It will be incredibly powerful for cars to be able to directly "talk" to one another. This will allow heavier traffic using existing infrastructure since vehicles will operate in unison. Accidents will decrease while safety and throughput and travel speeds will increase. But this will also be one of the last benefits we'll realize, because it requires that the vast majority of vehicles be autonomous in order to work effectively and complete elimination of human driving is still quite a long way off.
Yes, your car is using sensors to detect the speed and location of the car in front of you and reacts accordingly, it's cool technology. Now imagine how amazing it will be if the car in front of you sends out a signal that it's going to slow down to a specific speed at a predetermined location or time, which might be based on the car's integrated information about the road conditions or maps. Then your car won't react to a change that has already happened, instead it will sync with the first car and make the necessary adjustments at the exact right time and location. In theory, if this works properly your car could essentially travel just a couple inches behind the car in front of you and both cars would remain safe because of how they communicate with each other. But it only works if all of the cars are autonomous.
I'm curious to hear your rules. One I always preach is to drive predictably, which comes with some experience as you learn how traffic flows. One example is yielding right of way when the rules of the road don't dictate it. While it might seem like you're being nice to other drivers, you are creating a dangerous situation because now you've created an uncommon situation and you don't know how drivers will react.
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Rule 1: Maintain a safe interval with the car in front of you, giving yourself enough time and room to stop your vehicle short of a back-end collision if something happens. In my experience of over 50 years of driving, the single most frequent cause of accidents or near-accidents has been the violation of that rule.
Rule 2: Drive with a view toward the horizon rather than locked in only to the vehicle in front of you. It's amazing how much trouble you can head off by simply being aware of down-range conditions.
Rule 3: Drive defensively. This doesn't mean scrunched over and paranoid. It means using the marvel of your human brain to anticipate what dumb thing the other guy may do.
Rule 4: Focus on driving while you're driving. Not the phone. Not weekend plans. Not your problems at school or work. There's plenty of time to think about that stuff later, and none of it will mean much unless you arrive at your destination with yourself and your vehicle in one piece.
Rule 5: Don't block traffic in the left lane. In heavy freeway traffic, this may not apply so much, but generally speaking you don't want to be the guy thoughtlessly hogging that lane because it tends to tick people off and may tempt them to take some risks of their own.
Rule 6: Maintain control of your emotions. Be aware that some of the people on the road with you have the maturity level of 10-year olds. You will see these people do dumb and outrageous things. It may make you angry. Let it go. Let them go. Either they already have or they will pay the price for their juvenile idiocy. Make sure you don't pay too.
Those were my six rules, and all my kids became pretty good (and safe) drivers, though it came easier to some than to others. One thing for sure: I definitely aged quite a bit teaching them...
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