Old Sayings Apply While Driving Through Bad Weather
Jackknifes can occur fast and on snow and ice, and are very difficult to recover from. Photos: Tom Berg; from ABC and NBC newscasts.
">Jackknifes can occur fast and on snow and ice, and are very difficult to recover from. Photos: Tom Berg; from ABC and NBC newscasts.
">In my long-ago truck driving days, I always managed to “keep it between the fence posts,” to use an old saying. That means in dry or sloppy weather, I kept trucks on or near the roadway. It doesn't mean a truck never got away from me. That happened in the wee hours of a late winter morning, when light snow caused my truck to spin out, twice within a few minutes, on 90-degree curves.
The real cause was me driving too fast for conditions. Had I been driving a semi, it might not have ended well because pulling a trailer is far more tricky.
Newscasts within the last week, when blizzards hit the Northeast and elsewhere, showed a lot of scenes of jackknifed semis on various Interstates, and a few in ditches. While I didn't have to pull trailers through snow and ice in Wisconsin winters, I sometimes whined about traffic, idiot car drivers, and the weather.
My boss, a former driver, once lectured, “You're the one who's supposed to be in control of the truck. If you get into trouble, you're the one who's responsible.” Funny thing: Police tend to see it that way, too. My boss could've added that for every truck and driver that comes to grief along a certain stretch of road, there are many that don't. They must've done something right.
Slow way down in blinding conditions? Sure, but not so suddenly that you get rear-ended. Even better, park the truck in a safe place, like a truck stop, customer's yard (if they'll allow it), or rest area, and wait out the storm. Or seek a way around it. Watching weather forecasts, particularly those of a ...Read the rest of this story
