Two killed in 100-vehicle pile-up in US

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20454417

I ordered a present that shipped by FedEx and I'm hoping I wasn't one of the unlucky motherfuckers whose present was in one of those trucks!

How badly must everyone have been tailgating for a hundred car pileup?!

Shame the wreckage can't be left there, would make an awesome set for some Walking Dead scenes.

Imagine a group of zombies shuffling over the crest of a hill. "Braaiiiins... braaiiiinnnns... holy shit, look at that. Turn around, everybody, we're not gonna find any brains here."

It wouldn't be necessary for all of them to be tailgating for that kind of pile up to happen. I've seen fogs so dense that I literally couldn't see beyond the end of my hood. You hit a patch that thick and there's just nothing safe you can do. If you slow down, you risk having someone slam into your ass end, if you keep going at the same speed, you might slam into someone ahead of you who isn't going as fast, if you pull over, you might smack into someone on the side of the road. (Assuming you can pull over. For some idiot reason, lots of highways around here now have large stretches where you're blocked from pulling over by fencing.)

A large, dense patch, that rolled in quickly, would be death for people driving. You could hear the sound of cars crashing around you, but you'd have no idea if it was right in front of you, or off to the side, or what.

Lorries?
I dare anyone to call a Texans' truck a "lorry" to his face.

What is it with British English and making everything sound like baby talk, anyway?

Did anybody watch the lorries on the telly with their rellies? (Or is that last one Australian?)

Rellies is Australian.

OK. I knew I had seen it used here, but couldn't remember if it was by a British person or an Australian.

Cars should be fitted with radar or flir or something to avoid this. Come on it's 2012.

At the very least we could have otters with flashlights on the roof.

I bet some of those trucks were heading to Wal-Mart....

You can get cars with collision-avoidance systems; they're just in the minority right now.

And this is what happens when people don't drive for the conditions... I don't care what you say, as soon as they hit that fog bank they should have slowed down.

That's probably what caused it. One guy slowed down to 25 MPH, while the guy behind him slowed down to 30 MPH. Not that going the speed limit would have necessarily been any safer.

Or one guy slowed down a little, and the rest of the morons kept going like a bat out of hell.

That's why I always say that regular bats are much safer than hellbats.

Its Texas, so anything's possible. Don't forget that trucks have a much greater stopping distance than cars, so even if everybody jammed on the brakes all at once, folks could still get plowed into.

You kind of sound like you're supporting the idea of speeding blindly through fog. The thing is, even if no one reduced speed, everyone still tends to travel at different speeds. If collisions are inevitable, it's still better to reduce speed because the damage is going to be less at lower speeds.

You're still going to be in bad shape if you get hit by a semi at 30, and without knowing the profile of the road, its impossible to say how much warning any of the drivers had about the fog. Add in the fact that many of the people driving might not have been familiar with the road, and its not difficult to see how such a thing could happen. Only a couple of people were killed, so its not like it was mass slaughter.

If you notice in the picture, the left hand side of the road has a wire fence, so getting off the road for the people in the fast lane would have been difficult. As I said, I've been in massively dense patches of fog before, and they're scary as hell. You slow down, and you worry that the guy behind you might not stop, but if you keep going, you might smack into the guy in front of you. Its a dice roll, no matter what, and sections of road can clear or become obscure in seconds in some places, so even though the guy behind you can see you (or you can see the guy ahead of you) the same isn't true of everyone. Throw in things like curves and hills and things can get dicey before you have much chance to react.

Not that it would have helped anyone here, but I hope this spurs automotive technology to incorporate some kind of sensors in the car that can display their data in a HUD embedded in the windshield. Fog pops up like this and the display shows a virtual representation of the road and vehicles ahead. I know that even once the technology is available it won't be omnipresent on the roads. But the sooner it's developed, the sooner that happens.

some times shit happens that no hind sight can prevent.. sounds like a ot of innocent people were in an ACCIDENT

And hindsight can prevent it other times?

The secret is for everyone to respond to training in these situations, IE you know what to slow down to in sudden fog.

Given the horrible driving I see at four way stops, the fact that I saw about a dozen people pass police stops in the slow lane without changing lanes in totally clear roads, and the fact that no one uses turn signals, it is obvious that we all deserve wrecks like this.

I hate the average American driver. Not the person. The driver.

Yea, it was a fucking mess out there.

Collision avoidance systems can't do shit in a situation like this but give you a heads up that the shit is about to hit the fan. Try using one headed towards a wall at speed and see if you stop. Isn't going to happen. Same difference here.
Couple of stretches along the coast are bad about fog and that was one of them.

Stuff like this will happen form time to time until cars are driven by computers.

What's the difference?

Even after that, unless they're using more than just normal cameras. I wouldn't expect the Google Car to have done any better than the human drivers in this particular scenario.

So these disfigured "Loris" were lezzing out on each other after a major wreck? That is a pretty sick sex fetish if you ask me.

Anyway, if they were on their way to Walmart it would be a toxic spill, if their cargo was dog food or baby pacifiers.