I used to live in DC with a car and never encountered this exactly. If I had even a clue that a snow storm was coming, car would get parked and I got all my groceries and food ahead of time.

However, here in Miami we have something different but in a way similar. We will get pounding rain and and for some reason, there are some on the freeway that will like to drive fast and an accident can and will occur. Most people I have seen will slow down, put on regular and hazards lights and some will even pull over and park.

 

When I was living in SoCal, a friend of mine was visiting from Detroit. It was raining that day and he commented that it looks like Californians have no idea how to drive in bad weather. Californians have no idea how to drive in bad weather, same thing here, rain hits and you start to see pileups. Thankfully technology like traction and stability control, anti lock brakes have cut the accident rate down somewhat. In the 80's and 90's there would be accidents everywhere when it rained

 

When I lived in Mexico City, I have to give credit to the drivers there, they could drive very well in the hard rain that came through without issue and rarely would I see pileups of any kind or fender benders in that kind of weather and the vehicles often did not have the safety that we have in the US, but the people there certainly handled themselves better. Moreover, most were driving stick shift cars.

 

Isn't an accident in Mexico classified as a crime? When I was 17 a group of my friends took a trip to Tijuana, Mexico. I had to drop out of the trip, and thankfully! A drunk guy ran in front of their car and they hit him, breaking his leg. They were all arrested and the captain told them the guy died (he didn't, he just had a broken leg) and charged them with murder. Their parents had to pay $10K "fine" each to get them out. Thank God I didn't go because my dad would probably have left me there for awhile to teach me a lesson

 

Don't worry......the electronics will protect you

 

Absolutely insane.

So what happened was those snow squalls blew up incredibly fast, We experienced that too here in the DC area, where it would be bright and sunny, and then all of a sudden it would go to a white out very unexpectedly. You could actually see around you areas where it was snowing and where you were, the sun was shining. Extremely odd. So you had all of these people driving along in clear conditions and then with the snap of a finger, it became a total whiteout.

81 is a heavily traveled route by truckers (clearly) which makes that type of thing extra dangerous.

Just wow. Miracle only 3 people were killed.

 

Yeah....here in the D.C. area, the snow squalls were more confined to your part of the region north of the Potomac than where I was in Fairfax County. The river was just about the dividing line.....as it often is with that type of system where Lake-Effect squalls from Lake Ere are strong enough to blow over the mountains to the SE. Too many motorists, though, and too many truckers, are just pressed too much for time in bad conditions like that. Motorists are impatient, and don't want to give up a single minute of their time on the road for inconvenience, and truckers are overly-pressed to deliver large loads (and get paid) no matter what the conditions. The result is......well, obvious.

 

The issue that I found there was that most people do not carry auto insurance. It was a requirement for me to have Mexican Auto Insurance on my RX300 and I also kept stateside insurance at the lowest level while I was away (because you needed to keep your plate up to date in order to get the Mexican Auto insurance) on my type of visa, an FM3.

However, Mexicans would get themselves in a pickle if the police were there after an accident and someone did not have insurance and could not pay or there was not some type of agreement at the point of accident with the other party. Then there was going to be jail until someone sorted it out.

 

..........And we wonder why Mexico has such a corrupt stereotype.