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I'm sure that some sort of 'engineering failure' contributed to this, or at least made it worse... 5

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I was almost killed in an early morning drive on a local expressway. The pavement was moist due to mist, and an unknown vehicle obviously had just spilled a small amount of oil on the pavement around a shape curve. As usual, I slowed down to make the turn, but my car spin around out of control. The lucky thing was the traffic was light, and the cars behind me were quite alert to steer clear of me.
 
Whether it's climate change, or whatever, I don't recall hearing about Tule fog collisions since I was a young adult. Note that I've encountered Tule fog as far south as Grapevine, but that was a long time ago. According to the number of Tule fog occurrences has gone down.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
There may be insufficient engineering; but that's due to cost. People already have a readily available indicator of their own speed; it's called a speedometer, and is usually quite visible just over the top of their steering wheels. I think the issue is that the safe speed, based on your speedometer is invariably slower than what people want to go at, particularly if you CAN'T SEE ANYTHING, so you think you;re not moving much.

I've had the occasion to drive in Tule fog and recall driving what I thought to be relatively on the edge of my visibility limit and then seeing a semi barrel past me in the fast lane going at least 30 mph faster.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
IR stuff said:
I've had the occasion to drive in Tule fog and recall driving what I thought to be relatively on the edge of my visibility limit and then seeing a semi barrel past me in the fast lane going at least 30 mph faster.
Click to expand...
Not a semi but if it was a 5 ton it may have been me.
Many years ago I was heading east out of Vancouver Canada and the entire Frazer Valley was blanketed in thick fog.
The car drivers had almost zero visibility.
The thing was that the fog was only about 4 or 5 feet thick.
The car drivers were right in the thick of it.
In the truck cab, we were above the fog in clear air with excellent visibility.
We could just see enough of the road to drive fairly fast and the tail lights of the cars let us easily avoid the very slow and very sparse traffic.
I did wonder what the other drivers thought when we barreled past.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
Wonder no longer - <long string of unprintable words>
 
I don’t know if the San Joaquin Tule Fog was ever only six feet thick, but I’m sure there were many times it was less than twenty feet thick.
 
I've driven in fog when it was only about three feet thick and it's a very weird sensation.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
BTW, we made it to Fresno with no problems and no fog. Christmas Day traffic was very light. I don't think I've ever seen LA traffic as light as it was yesterday, but then I've never driven thru LA on Christmas before.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
"I've never driven thru LA on Christmas before."

That's true of most people, which is why traffic is so light, and also why most people are unaware it is so light on Christmas day. One year I tried to buy some milk on Christmas day in Lakewood. Until then I never realized how few stores are open on Christmas. I found some milk at a small liquor store.
 
Some supermarkets are open on Christmas day, as are some pharmacies. I nearly made a trip to the local CVS yesterday to try and find a faucet aerator tool, but luckily, managed to find one in one of my many boxes. As it turned out, that wasn't where the problem was, anyway.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Christmas is over, can we get back to the focusing topic - some sort of "Engineering Failure" :)

 
Yes, our local Ralphs was open yesterday (I saw a sign a couple of days ago).

Twenty years ago my wife and I visited our son and his family for Christmas, who had just moved to Houston. We got there Christmas Eve and the next morning we discovered that they barely had any food in the house and we went looking for a store to be open and there was nothing. We finally found a gas-station mini-mart where you had to pay three-prices for a bottle of milk and some lunch meat and bread.



John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
@r13 don't be a Grinch ;-)

Besides, this is mostly a people problem; until such time that all cars are autonomous, have radars and automatic following/braking, such incidences aren't going away. The bad news will be that the radars will insist on a much wider gap between cars, which we won't stand for; not following 15 ft behind a car going 85 mph is just so un-American...

Actually, the gap might not be THAT large, assuming the cars can also coordinate amongst themselves; if there's intra-car comms, the first car to see the fog can relay warnings to all the cars following, resulting in much better behavior than each car individually finding out about the fog.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
just so un-American...
Click to expand...
:) Something to think about!
 
We start back to SoCal from Fresno in the morning. We lucked-out driving up here on Wednesday as they closed the Grapevine about six hours after we had passed thru the area (the I-5 remained closed for about 36 hours). As for tomorrow, it appears that we should be OK going up the Grapevine (they're predicting the next heavy snow there starting Sunday afternoon) however, we might see a bit of that Tule fog in the morning as we're leaving Fresno.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Geez Dave! That video is hideous!

Clearly or foggily, there needs to be a protocol for fog. Having dozens of emergency responders, who obviously took time to accumulate, only to become potential bowling pins is moronic! The highway patrol should've blocked any further traffic into the area before anyone was at the scene.

Also, don't trip while running out of the path of a careening semi.

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
I like to keep eyes on at least two cars in front of mine, and one direct behind, in case the leading one makes sudden stop and causing a pile up accident. However, it is often impossible in thick fog, or heavy snow storm situations, and I do have a tendency to follow and chasing the tail lights in front of me, that renders not enough safety distance between us. I found the best way is just pull over, stop, keep engine and warning lights on, then have a little rest while waiting.
 
retired13 said:
I like to keep eyes on at least two cars in front of mine, and one direct behind
Click to expand...
Same here. I will adjust my distance to the car in front depending on both the closeness of the two (or more) cars in front of me and the car in behind me.

Of course this does end up angering some idiots behind me as the closer they get to you to bigger gap I have to leave to the cars in front. But hey, I'm not putting myself in the middle of a stream of cars with a quarter of a second gap between each car.
 
Our drive home yesterday went off without a hitch. The morning 'fog' in Fresno turned out to be just a bit of mist in the air by the time we hit the road. There was a lot of snow at the top of the Grapevine, but it was all off the road where it was just nice to look at. BTW, we had a great time at our granddaughter's house and got that rare four-generation photo:

Four_Generations_of_Bakers_Dec_2019_xxx62t.jpg

December 2019 (Sony a6000)

That's John Jr, Tyler, Marina, John Sr and Barbara.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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