that in today's marvelous age of information, including entire cable channels devoted 24/7/365 to weather forecasts, with nearly 3/4 of our population possessing smartphones (some even subsidized by taxpayers!!!) with nearly instant access to fairly accurate weather forecasts, that some several + hundred vehicles can end up stranded in bad weather?
I mean, I knew 2 days ago that the chance for snow, ice, sleet and freezing rain was going to be high for most of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. And none of those states were even on any of my travel plans. I live several hundred miles north of there. (and I don't even have cable).
How can people be so stupid as to travel into an area that is forecast (with a fair amount of certainty) to have very bad weather that will likely make travel difficult and even dangerous? I see it happen several times a year, and it isn't getting better....
I know most people travel around in Condition White, but really....
Years ago Houston didn't have a good storm drain system. We'd have these 2-day downpours and every time this happened, people would drown because they drove down into flooded underpasses. Every Time !
ReplyDeleteHere in Seattle, everything is on a hill. We get freezes and people insist upon driving anyway, with the (to me) predictable result that traveling downhill is an unpredictable E-ticket ride, while travelling uphill is, well, pretty much not gonna happen. I would walk my daughter to school on these days and spend most of my time helping people push their cars out of the ditches so they could continue their wild slide to the bottom.
They live among us !