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trust your instincts

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	January 17, 2004

ELEVEN SECONDS You're driving along the highway when suddenly the wind picks up and blows the snow right at your windshield. The road is covered with snow so it's hard to see where the road-edge is, so you slow your Nissan to 40MPH and join the other vehicles in a kind of slow-moving convoy. You stay close enough to the car ahead of you, a station wagon, to keep it in sight and stay on the road, and you notice a light truck behind you doing the same thing. You're about ten minutes away from the next town. But the view of the station wagon ahead is obliterated by another snow squall, and for several minutes you're driving blind. You think about pulling over but are afraid if you do the vehicles behind you won't see you and will plow into you. You notice there are no vehicles coming the other way. And then the squall slows and you see a long dark shadow ahead. A long line of cars 400 feet ahead. Stopped. time = 0 seconds: You're young, and alert, and it only takes you 2/3 of a second to hit the brakes. You have snow tires, but you're on a raised bridge and it's icy. You're skidding, but staying straight. time = 1 second: 59 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. The guy in the truck behind you sees your brake lights and it then takes him 2/3 of a second to hit his brakes. He's 60 feet behind you, about 7 car-lengths. time = 2 seconds: 114 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. The guy behind you is getting closer. time = 3 seconds: 164 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. You remember that on dry roads a small car can brake from 40MPH -- that's 60 feet per second -- to zero in 3 seconds, decelerating at 20 feet per second squared. It seems like 3 minutes since you started sliding. The wind's picked up and you lose sight of the line of cars ahead. You no longer know if you're going straight. time = 4 seconds: 208 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. It looms back into sight, half as far away as when you first noticed it, but you still think you can stop in time. You start thinking crazy things: steer into the ditch, slowly? No, you're still going what feels like 25MPH, too fast. You'd spin anyway, probably. Would the emergency brake help? time = 5 seconds: 246 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. The truck behind you is now only 3 car lengths behind you, and closing. You decide that's his problem -- nothing you can do. time = 6 seconds: 280 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. You know you can stop in time, now. time = 7 seconds: 307 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. About 17MPH. It's like time is slowing to a stop. time = 8 seconds: 329 feet since you saw the blockage ahead. But the truck is right on your ass. time = 9 seconds: Half way into the 9th second the truck hits you. It's going at 18MPH and you're going 10MPH, but it feels like much more than an 8MPH impact. Your foot is shaking on the brake pedal. time = 10 seconds: You're braced to get hit again but it doesn't happen. The truck's right behind you and you're afraid the impact will push you into the station wagon, 26 feet ahead of you. time = 11 seconds: You stop 12 feet shy of the station wagon. The truck hits you again, but just nudges you ahead four feet. You're both stopped. The station wagon has kids in the back, unbuckled. The driver of the station wagon pulls ahead to the side of the road. time = 16 seconds: A cop knocks on your window. He screams, hysterically. He tells you to put your car in the ditch, walk to the front of the pileup alongside the ditch. He says if the guy behind you had been a semi or a Jeep, you'd be dead. He repeats the same message to the driver behind you. You don't understand why he told you this. He's preparing himself for the next vehicle coming along, for the worst. You drive into the shallow ditch, grab your winter clothes and climb out. You walk behind the station wagon family, beside the driver who hit you with his truck. He's just old enough to drive and you know the insurance company's going to raise his premiums sky-high, but you're numb and cold and don't know what to say so you just exchange license and insurance information. You pass 20 vehicles in the pile-up, including two trucks with small cars wedged partly underneath them. When you get to the front you're surprised that there's emergency vehicles everywhere, and none of the passengers from the front vehicles is in sight. You're ushered into a waiting tow truck and he says to write down you plate number and that he'll drop you at the police station in town and you'll be paged when your car's been towed. You keep going over the 11 seconds again and again, asking the tow truck driver if you should have done something different. He says the first collision happened nearly half an hour before yours, and there'll be more. Happens every winter on that bridge, he says. The cop saw you stop in time, you're home free, he says. At the police station, you fill out the accident report, and stand in line to file it. This happened to me thirty years ago, the only accident in my thirty-seven years of driving. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Reading the article last week by Malcolm Gladwell on the safety of SUVs, and driving yesterday morning on a snowy highway with poor visibility brought it all back. For thirty years, whenever the weather gets bad, I've been checking out who's driving behind me. 2:04:08 PM  trackback []  comment []

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