And here I thought it might be this video.
The bus does an amazingly good job of recovering…
Is it wrong that I giggled like a madwoman at the slinky bus swerving back and forth?
What a crazy video!
That damned bus is the one part of the video I cannot re-watch. The crashes make me wince, but that bus makes me cringe in terror. And it doesn’t even crash!
I’m finding all these icy car crash videos fascinating. It’s also reminding me that I hate that car manufacturers have decided that cars should be built so they can’t tap each other on the bumpers.
What do you mean? Most of the videos are cars getting into fender benders. (With a few bigger crashes thrown in) The bumper being ruined it was allows the occupants to stay safe, if the bumpers were rigid the occupants would absorb more of the collision.
As a longtime Seattle resident, there’s a couple of factors here.
First, we get maybe two or three days every year, on average, when the streets are this bad. Some years we may get two weeks of nasty icy conditions; then we’ll go two or three years where it’s never any worse than slush.
As a result, we have (a) drivers who don’t know what they’re doing, and (b) city government that can’t justify the investment into the infrastructure necessary to cope. So every four or five years, we get a really bad stretch where everybody’s on their own, and mayhem is the consequence. Then we all fret and frown and say we should be better next time, except that a year later, when it’s time to finalize the budget, we’ll be in the middle of a not-so-bad winter, and we say, “eh, what were we thinking, it’s not worth it,” and the money for plows etc gets cut. Rinse and repeat.
The second thing is this: The city is hilly. Really, really up-and-down. Incredibly steep hills downtown that will take a walker’s feet out from under him, and neighborhoods that are like Monopoly houses scattered over a wrinkled blanket. I’m scouring my brain, and I can think of a mere handful of major streets that are reasonably level for a significant distance. A slight incline doesn’t seem like it’d be much, but when you’re sliding on black ice, you might as well be on the downslope of a roller coaster. All of Seattle is like this.
Result: Periodic paralysis, and incredibly amusing footage on the TV news. 
About a minute into that video, there’s a truck that crashes and suddently becomes two trucks. What the hell?
The problem is not the bumpers absorbing the impact, but each of those bumpers costing $1500 to fix. A part of your car that is designed to absorb impacts should not be one of the most expensive parts on your car - it should either be disposable and cheap and easily replaced, or it should be made of something that can take multiple bumps in the car’s lifetime without needing replacing. It should not be a molded, painted part of the body that can’t take a bump or a scratch.
I’ve looked at that frame-by-frame four times and I still can’t figure it out!
Think quantum.
I knew what the video was the minute I saw the thread title. Scary shit!
As for that tunnel truck thing: that is how trucks reproduce, through cell division. It is a beautiful thing when you really look at it.
I’ve lived in California my entire life and have only gotten caught up in an uncontrolled slide on ice once. Fortunately, there was no damage, but damn, I am completely glad that so far, I almost never have to worry about that craziness. I had the complete feeling of helplessness, and I was only sliding at about 3 miles per hour.
That Russian tunnel was completely nuts. I think Russians drive too fast (I’ve driven around with a fair amount of Russian buddies).
I’m not sure, but I think that the two trucks were following each other very closely.
I didn’t even really think until right now about the fact that there are places where people do change their tires out for some other magical kind of tire.
Last year we had a mega ice storm – no power for over a week, which out here in the boonies means no water, since we have a well. Whole towns were closed because there were huge trees down on every street. When I did get to work, we had parked our cars at the edge of the parking lot, which had a slight slope up. By mid-afternoon when we came out, our cars had slid backward about five feet all by themselves.
Delivery truck.
I looked at it a number of times and never could make sense of it either. All of a sudden it’s just there. Weird.
Thank you! I needed a laugh.
I was lucky enough to be there for the worst storm in ten years.
I was under the impression they get light snow fairly often. The Seattleites were more “huh, it’s early this year” than “holy shit, it’s snowing!” and they’re originally from around SF.
I’m confused about folks saying get at least all-weathers if not snows. Is there some tires even less grippy than all-weather/all-season?
Someday I’ll get studs so I can feel completely intrepid.