It’s not my “business,” I guess, but do I have the right to express my opinion? How do you feel about people wearing baseball caps or flip-flops in nice restaurants? In any event, I see these things as signifiers–I’ll leave it at that.
I’m not saying the black pickup driver wasn’t driving insanely fast for conditions. I’m saying that without the truck there, they wouldn’t have crashed. Accidents typically happen when more than one road user does something wrong. That’s why the pickup driver isn’t already dead from driving like that. Of course, they can still run off the road by themself, but that’s less frequently the cause of serious harm.
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What happened here is you crested the hill too fast in dangerous conditions, you saw the guy who I was replying to stuck in the road, you lost control and you rear-ended him… and in the process you slid right past the point.
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Have to disagree with you…he was driving too fast - period. All it takes is a slight curve or dip or any number of other “normal” situations that would cause him to slam on his brakes and he would have crashed. The fact that it was a truck in the middle of the road makes little difference. In fact, rear ending the car in front probably saved him from a more serious crash as it dissipated a lot of his speed.
I see many dickheads in big 4x4’s on their roof in icy conditions from no other cause than simply driving too fast and reacting to a situation that would not pose a problem on normal, dry roads. A simple tap on the brakes at the wrong moment is all it takes.
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Appreciate a lot of the commentary, but nonetheless:
Comcast: Honey Badgers Wanted
Yeah, this looks bad because you’re only seeing the small number of drivers sliding off the road. You’re not seeing the thousands of Comcast users who were desperately trying to download porn.
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Or just friction in general. Although “amazes” isn’t the word I’d use, knowing the state of modern secondary education and driver’s ed. It’s sadly predictable.
PSA for those who don’t know: All wheel (or four wheel) drive doesn’t increase the friction between you and the ice. Not directly anyway. Friction is a function of the surface and the mass resting on it. The greater the mass, the greater the available friction. That’s it. Which tires you’re spinning doesn’t change anything about how friction works. AWD often translates to improved acceleration because your odds of having one driving tire on a stable, less icy patch of road are better when all the tires are receiving torque from the engine. It also increases the chance you’ll be able to melt through a thin patch of snow with at least one tire if you’re stuck.
Buy good tires and drive slower. AWD isn’t magic, and its ability to help people accelerate on icy roads is a mixed blessing.
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And simultaneously claim that that 5 cones is sufficient for safety…
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"[quote=“emo_pinata, post:119, topic:91150”]
… and not on the driver who has no business trying to make the road safer based on gut feeling - or even based on their own reading of published safety guidelines.
[/quote]
Srsly?
“Hey boss - I’m at the job site trying to fix the cable, but because of how I’m parked a whole buncha cars are now sliding into the ditch and I’ve got a guy filming me while asking me to put out more cones. Any chance we can get a flagger out here?”
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“No, if you so worried get it done faster.”
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Six cars piling up is solid empirical evidence of a lack of safety not a “gut feeling”.
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It is a word; it’s just often misused.
Putting out cones or standing and waving arms would be active.
Proactive means that you’re acting before the risk is there. So, if someone slips on my driveway and I start salting it to melt the ice, that’s “reactive.” If I see ice forming, and put salt out before anyone slips, that’s “active.” If I see an ice storm is coming in later this week, dissolve salt in water, and let it dry so that my driveway is pre-salted and the ice never forms in the first place, that’s “proactive.”
But I agree in this case, if the truck’s already there, there’s nothing you can really do that falls into the “proactive” category.
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Oh, I’m sure you’d be able to make up any number of ways that proposed help the driver could have provided would fail. If I said the driver could have put out more cones, you’d say the drivers were going too fast for that to help, or as above if I said the driver could call someone, you’d find a way to show that wouldn’t help either.
But your contention (“no business trying…”) is that the guy shouldn’t even try, and that’s bullshit.
Just ignore that pile of wrecked cars behind the Comcast truck. They are professionals who must be presumed to be following company policy. Policy. You can’t question policy. Therefore everything they do is unquestionably correct. QED.
/s
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My understanding was always that it meant I had a task to do that management couldn’t articulate until I hadn’t done it.
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Where I work, they’re big on “competencies” - Level 1 is “reactive”, level 2 is “active,” level 3 is “proactive,” and level 4 is I think something about taking a leadership role.
The Level 3s are all about trying to figure out what the problems are going to be and solving them before they exist.
Really proactive people come up with solutions, then cause the problems, fix them and take credit.
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I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.
You have my deepest sympathies. 
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I think that was the level 4.
Yep that’s level 4.
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