Where do you live?
You said you tried to brake, but you couldn’t stop… are you aware that there are other methods of slowing your vehicle and/or avoiding collision in that situation? “Half a block” at “maybe 10 mph” is a lot of time to regain control of your vehicle and avoid the accident. I am sorry that you crashed, and I am sympathetic with you about the condition of Chicago’s roads, but the accident was indeed your fault.
Nope.
If your car is literally sliding on ice, with basically no traction at all, it really doesn’t matter what you do. You can turn the wheel, you can apply the brakes, you can try the accelerator, and the car will simply continue sliding in whatever direction it happened to be going in.
If you have some traction, there are things you can do, but there are times when there is literally no recourse available to you except to brace yourself and wait until you hit something.
Like these people.
Every single one of the cars in that video had their front brakes locked up before the impact (except the one the gal jumped out of… WTF?). There are times when there is no recourse available, but that situation wasn’t one of them.
When I first started driving, I used to go to empty parking lots when it snowed, and intentionally lose control of my vehicle. I was being a jackass at the time, but in retrospect, it was good experience.
I’m not sure what’s more dangerous in general, though; people who try to drive the speed limit out, or people that drive 15mph on icy roadways.
What would have them do?
Sure, avoiding the line of cars was a possibility, but what then?
Any attempt to avoid a collision should, ideally, avoid placing you in a situation where an even worse collision is likely. And it looks to me as though that’s exactly what would have happened if those cars had managed to avoid joining the queue of rear-ended cars in the kerb lane. They might have ended up in opposing lanes, or perhaps even sailing though an intersection further down the street. In the circumstances, a relatively minor rear-end bump seems like probably the best result for many of them.
I still don’t know why the woman decided to make a leap from her driver’s seat, though.
Given themselves more time and space. Not locked up the brakes.
The people in the left lane seemed to be handling their speed and conditions just fine. Presumably, they were in a position to stop before the intersection.
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I do agree with the rest of your post, but it’s kind of like racquetball. There are certain shots that are unreturnable. The only defense is to not give your opponent a chance to make said shots.
What other methods could I have used to slow my car down? I was on a one way one lane street with cars parked on both sides. I had no where to go. My choice was to veer and hit a parked car or slow as much as possible and tap the one in front of me.
Years ago my car slid two blocks on slush at about 10 mph on a slight hill. Sometimes there really is no stopping until you hit something. I’ve also been on the interstate with traffic stopped and cars sliding sideways off the road because of the grade for drainage, which is almost nothing. Anybody that thinks you can always stop or even stay still with the brakes on hasn’t yet experienced the worst.
That lady that jumped out of the car is an idiot. That was a good way to die.
She’s probably had an air bag go off in her face before.
Anybody else get the feeling that the posters saying that it was the OP’s fault probably don’t live where this would even be a concern? One is even from New Mexico for crying out loud. New Mexico residents do not get to comment on how to drive on ice. I’m going to trust the guy from Wisconsin.
This thread just makes me super-grateful that I live in South Texas.
We do freeze a few times per winter, but it’s only dangerous if it’s also raining AND freezing…and when that happens, all the schools close and everybody freaks out and nobody has to show up for work.
Yes, I’m serious.
The same thing happens in spring when it floods. (We are in a basin so we flood super-quick and with torrential amounts of water.)
But when we do get rain and freezing temperatures, you really only have to worry about bridges and overpasses freezing over…the air temperature only gets as low as 20 degrees or so, so the only roads that actually ice over are bridges/overpasses…and the city freaks out sanding and salting everything.
I’ve slid on a rainy frozen overpass…just once…and it seriously freaked me out. I was turning left and I completely and utterly lost control of my vehicle. I just slid about twelve feet, with nothing to do but wait and see what happened.
I have nothing but sympathy for the OP. I am just grateful that freezing weather is an occasional novelty to me.
Fuck y’all. I have snow tires, I have anti-lock brakes, I grew up in this area, I was trained in fucking ice racing when I learned how to drive, and I’m still sliding all over these motherfucking ice rinks we’re calling “streets” this month.
Pumping the brakes, not pumping the brakes, steering into the slide, what the fuck ever. None of it makes any difference when you have 10 inches of clearance on each side and a solid sheet of ice, no snow cover, for more than a block.
This IS the city’s fault, and this IS one of the basic services our fucking tax dollars should be covering, and I’ll go sprinkle that fucking bean with Morton’s if it will convince them to reprioritize here.
That lady jumping out of her car is insane.
I’m from north-western Ontario, Canada, where driving on snow and ice is routine. We even have ice roads that cross frozen lakes.
The conditions that prevent driving are rare but possible. For such conditions, I simply do not drive. Specificaly, if the road is frozen, and then snow is pressed down by traffic and plows until it is very smooth, and then there is light freezing rain for an extended period, the surface can be so polished that it takes a long while to come to a stop. Whether or not the OP faced such conditions I cannot say.
For myself, when conditions are like that (which is very rare), I simply put on chains to make it to the first town, where I pull over and wait it out (my longest wait last year was 17 hours at a truck stop despite being only 1 hour from home). Anyone who drives in such conditions without chains or studs is negligent.
Note that even in communities in which the roads are maintained by plowing, salting and sanding, not all roads will be clear at all times. It takes hour to days to clear all roads in many communities. Anyone driving must recognize this and act accordingly, including not driving when the conditions cannot be mitigated by regular winter driving precautions and techniques.
If the conditions were like that and the OP still went out, then then she made a mistake which unfortunately led to a collision. If the conditions were not like that, and the OP had a collision, she should brush up on her winter drivng precautions and techniques. Either way, she was responsible for her collision.
To me, a community not reasonably maintaning roads in a community in the winter is stupid, particularly if chains are not permitted in that community, for it hampers the regular functioning of the community – people sit at home rather than go to work if it is not safe to drive. Whether or not the level of winter road maintenance is neglient would depend on what is reasonable practice in that area, so yes, it is possible that in the OP’s example the City of Chicago might be liable for contributory negligence (unless there is some sort of law against that which protects the municipality – I don’t know what the laws are in Illinois).
Even if a community does maintain its roads in the winter, please note that not all roads will be clear at all times. For most communities, it takes hours or days to cover each and every street. A driver must expect that at any given time during and following a winter storm, there will be streets that have not been maintained, so the driver must accordingly. Ultimately, the level of maintenance does not relieve the basic responsibility of every driver to simply not drive in unsafe conditions. In other words, when it comes to the blame game, the OP was primarily responsible for her own fate, regardless of whether the City of Chicago also contributed to the causing of the collision.
See that’s your mistake. We have things like cities and jobs down here. You can’t go trying to force your ways on us. Setting in a truck stop for 17 hours isn’t really an option. Maybe OP had to go pick up kids, or go to work. Would you have the OP fired because Chicago didn’t salt the roads?
Studded tires and chains are hard on the city roads and it rarely gets cold enough to freeze salt water down here (I’m directly across the lake from Chicago). Salt works here just fine.
At anyrate say the OP did pull over and wait it out. You ever payed Chicago parking fees? Bloody insane expensive. $10 bucks when I went. I was just in the city for a couple hours.
No Chicago is for not maintaining it’s roads. Everywhere is salted down here. It’s expected because it works.
If Chicago has simply walked away from winter road maintenance at any reasonable level, folks ought to consider going after Chicago for negligence in not meeting a reasonable standard of care. Given enough actions against it (or perhaps a class action), the city might find it wiser to up the level of its winter road maintenance. It would not relieve the driver of primary responsibility for driving in conditions that were not safe, but it would put pressure on the city to clean up its act upon also being found negligent.
Nice to know that you still have jobs down there – I had heard otherwise, given the meltdown of your economy.
We won’t force our ways on you – just because we plow, salt and sand our paved roads, doesn’t mean that you should follow our example.
All I ask is that you keep sending up the funny videos of folks slowly skidding into each other.
As far it goes for staying off the road for a few hours rather than go out and crash a vehicle, what can I say, we differ as to opinion, for I’d rather not cause a crash.
Where are you getting “for a few hours” from? It’s been like this for the better part of two weeks, until this morning when a warm breeze and last night’s rain started to go to work on the ice sheet. Should we shut down the city for two weeks at a time? Or two months, as it will be in January?
You run a city in a snowy, icy area, you take people’s money for running things, you take away their ability to adequately equip their vehicles for ice and snow, then you better fucking take care of the fucking streets. I don’t even know why this is a debate.
Well I think part of it is we have different experiences with winter. Down here the roads are clear of snow most of the time. Through winter it regularly gets warm enough to melt the snow off so it doesn’t pile up.
If I was up there or even farther north in Michigan I’d be following your advice very closely, or if we had a bad snow or ice storm. I agree there’s times it isn’t safe to go out.
We’ll keep the videos coming if you send down some more Tim Hortens. SW Michigan is underserved yo.
Yea we still have jobs, barely. Betcha Chicago’s gonna be hiring some salt truck drivers soon.
It is blatantly obvious on this thread who has experienced these conditions and who has not. The city cannot just “not go out” when the streets are icy. Like WhyNot said the ice lasts days, weeks, sometimes more. There is no avoiding it. The city’s priorities are just all fucked up if you ask me. Who wants to go with me to get rid of that dumb ass bean that the city spends worthless money to maintain?
*Really, why would you want to see the reflection of the city in a huge bean when you can turn your ass around and see the true visual of the skyline right in front of you? :rolleyes: