I keep seeing this language that the fog "caused" the collisions. No. Reckless drivers who failed to drive appropriately for the conditions are what caused the collisions. The fog didn't get behind the wheel of those cars and press down on the accelerators to make them go too fast to stop for hazards. The drivers did that.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
145 points (98.7% liked)
News
23014 readers
7 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Something makes me think there's more to it than that. You're talking about over a hundred people being reckless which seems hard to believe. I'm guessing that the smoke from the marsh fires wasn't spread consistently throughout the fog, causing patches of extremely low visibility. The result is that you could have a wreck even when going well below the speed limit because you suddenly go from low visibility to no visibility without any warning (if the smoke is a similar color as the fog it might seem invisible and catch you off guard).
You’re talking about over a hundred people being reckless which seems hard to believe.
I agree with your overall point, but I find this very easy to believe.
Fog is one of the most dangerous weather events because people don't think of it as dangerous.
You have the people that do think it's dangerous and slow down so you don't hit someone in front of you and then you have the people who don't think it's dangerous and go barreling through at full speed and hit all the cars going slow.
Unless they experienced something like spontaneous failure of their braking system due to smoke, they were driving recklessly. Driving recklessly is the norm, such as driving too fast to be able to respond to hazards. Easy to believe 90% of the people in the collision were driving recklessly and a small percent probably responded appropriately, but got rear ended by people driving recklessly anyways.
Can’t speak for every region, but where I live easily 99% of drivers drive too closely to the car in front to reasonably stop in an emergency
It's also possible that shitty drivers took out safe drivers that managed to do the right thing. It doesn't have to be every single driver. A single tractor trailer could plow through plenty.
I think the big patch of invisible road in front of you would be pretty good warning
You're talking about over a hundred people being reckless which seems hard to believe.
I hope you never have to drive in Charlotte, NC during rush hour. We sometimes even shoot at each other instead of honking our horns over here.
It doesn't take a hundred bad drivers. A single bad person can cause a cascade effect that ruins countless lives.
This is why i want less car centric infrastructure, i dont wanna be driving with these folks
The fuck is a “marsh fire”? Aren’t marshes supposed to be wet? How TF does a fucking marsh catch on fire?
Louisianian here. We're seeing a lot of wildfires in marshy areas due to the extreme drought conditions. The marsh grass is really dry and several areas near me have experienced these fires in normally wet areas that would not burn.
Their slow organic decomposition process brings a kind of a non-efficient fuel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat Thus in swamps fire can linger for a very long time.
Peat has a high carbon content and can burn under low moisture conditions. Once ignited by the presence of a heat source (e.g., a wildfire penetrating the subsurface), it smoulders. These smouldering fires can burn undetected for very long periods of time (months, years, and even centuries) propagating in a creeping fashion through the underground peat layer.
Peat is not commonly found in Louisiana's wetlands.
Yeah, they just threw that in there so casually.
thought it said "superfrog" at first
Fuck people who drive too fast in bad weather. I hope they live with the burden of their bad decisions for the rest of their painful lives.