Cars crash on slick South Eugene roads
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EUGENE, Ore. - Snow hit the valley floor Tuesday morning, with enough sticking in hilly neighborhoods to make the morning commute slick.
Crews worked to plow and sand area roads. Trouble spots included Eugene's South Hills above 40th Avenue and Spring Boulevard off of 30th along the ridge between Eugene and Interstate 5.
The larger school districts in Eugene and Springfield stuck to their normal schedule with busses on snow routes, but schools in outlying areas with more snow and higher hills delayed or even cancelled school.
Despite the headaches of wintery weather, lots of people were happy to see the snow.
"It's awesome," Leah Wren told KVAL News. "I love it. I love the snow."
"I just wanted to check out how much snow there was because (Eugene) 4J schools are open and I thought it was a little unusual," said Sherri Bandy, "but this is our first year living up here so I didn't know how much snow there would be and I wanted to see how much there was."
Bandy was so concerned about the snow that she didn't send her kids to school Tuesday since she couldn't even get out of her own driveway.
Busses were busy picking up kids throughout the morning, running on snow routes.
The roads may still be slippery or icy as snow showers continue to wash through the region until at least 4 p.m., so be careful when you're driving and keep a good distance behind the car in front of you.
Doc, I beg to differ. The absolutely worst drivers in sun, rain or snow all reside in good ol' Corvallis. I sat at one intersection one time and watched three wrecks occur from people trying to leave a parking lot onto 9th St. It was hilarious. The cops were there investigating the first one when the other two occurred. The cops just stood there shaking their heads.Â
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 @the buttcut Heh, that's why I qualified it with "I've ever seen." It would be a hell of a coincidence if the worst drivers on earth were in one of the dozen or so cities I've driven enough in to have an opinion about :)
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Those Corvallis drivers sound a lot like the drivers here, actually. I always get a laugh out of the surprisingly regular sight of two Priuses (yes, that's the plural. I thought it would be Prii or Prium or something, but I looked it up, and: no) that have destroyed each other. They're the new Camry/Taurus/any Buick. Driving a Prius is like bringing a recorder (the crappy plastic flute) to an opera. Only someone with zero idea what the hell they're doing would think that it's appropriate.
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The cops have no one to blame but themselves, in my opinion (well, not really, the drivers are to blame too, but nuance isn't as catchy). I don't know if Corvallis is the same as Eugene in this regard, but of all the traffic laws, the police only enforce speed limits with any regularity -- which is hilarious, since we Eugene folks drive so ridiculously slow to begin with. I spend several weeks a year in the Washington, D.C. area, and even with cops every 50 feet everyone still drives a lot faster than they do here. Speed isn't our problem, ability and alertness are. Oh well, I'm off on a tangent now, but you get the idea.
 @Doc  @the buttcut And yet, Oregon has a low rate of accidents and we pay (less!) for it in our insurance rates. Police don't enforce traffic laws as strictly as I'd prefer, but on the other hand, most Oregonians (Eugene, Corvallis, Portland, all about the same) stop at stop signs, use their turn signals, don't run red lights, etc.
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As for DC, I found this gem over at forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2012/08/28/cities-with-the-worst-drivers-2012/
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DC has, according to Allstate, at 112% above average accident rate and is ranked 193 out of the biggest 200 cities on the "best driver" list.
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Eugene has 16.3% *less* accidents than the national average. And is 9th on the Best Driver list! And even that kinda sucks, we were 6th best last year.
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Portland, for comparison, which has the same population size as DC was 17.8% above average accident rate placing it at 128th of 200.
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And Eugene drivers generally drive 5 mph over the speed limit, if that seems slow, you might just be used to unsafe speeds.
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I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to look up accident rates per brand of car to see what percent less accidents Prius drivers have. ;)
 @SkinnersGhost  @the buttcut I remember when those stats came out, and some thoughtful people pointed out that in Eugene, people don't report accidents unless they are major, skewing the results our way. Our rate of fatalities per mile is actually near the national average.
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Also -- speed limits. They are set to be safe for a poorly maintained, 40 year-old Dodge pickup with 20 year-old brake pads driven in a nighttime downpour by a teenager with ADHD. If you cannot safely drive considerably faster than that on a normal, dry day in your 6 year-old, 4-wheel ABS having toyotahondafordchevyhundyaisubaru FWD 4-cylinder driving appliance, your skills are severely lacking. I would question whether or not you should be driving at all. The current limits are a result of lazy politics (road is unsafe? MOAR SPEED LIMITS!!!) and ignorance. Remember, the safest stretch of road on earth (injuries per mile driven) has no speed limit at all. What it does have is the benefit of being in a country with a very restrictive and thorough driver training and testing program, combined with obsessive enforcement of, and severe penalties for, misuse of passing lane, failure to signal (did you seriously claim that Eugene drivers signal their turns? My dashcam begs to differ), and distracted driving (half the daytime drivers on a typical Eugene day are on the phone, yelling at their kids or messing around with something in the passenger seat).
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If you are driving more slowly than you feel natural doing, simply because of some number you see on a sign, you are driving too slowly for the conditions, and very likely causing more risky pressure waves to travel backward in the traffic behind you (if you want to understand traffic, you have to study fluid dynamics). Honestly, you shouldn't even be looking at your speedometer. It takes an average of 1.5 seconds, during which time you are not looking at the road. Once you have a modicum of skill, you should be able to choose a safe speed purely by feel. If you need the crutch of an artificial limit to find a safe speed, you have a dangerously poor actual skill at managing a vehicle. What will you do when someone runs out in front of your car? There's no magic number to tell you how much of your tires' grip to use for braking and how much to use for turning. You have to just know, and by feel (yes, anti-lock brakes largely obviate this example, but there are many others like it).
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And if we're going to talk about statistics and Priuses, let's talk about the myth of unintended acceleration. After costing Toyota tens of millions of dollars investigating it, it turns out that the problem is, and always was, the drivers. It was pretty obvious to gearheads from the beginning, since anyone that knows anything about cars knows that it would take upwards of 500-900 horsepower (depending on the car) to accelerate through a full brake application in a modern car with 4-wheel disc brakes. Therefore, it was impossible that these people had hit the brake with full force unless there had been a statistically impossible TRIPLE failure (unintended acceleration, brake failure, and failure of the acceleration kill switch in the brake pedal). They hit the gas thinking it was the brake, and at rates so much higher than the general population that some thoughtful people initially assumed that Prius drivers couldn't possibly be that much dumber than the average driver. Well, they are, and multiple studies confirmed as much.
 @SkinnersGhost  @Doc  @the buttcut Apparently you aren't really that observant .Eugene has some very bad drivers.. Those statistics mean nothing..If we are to believe the news media we have had two pedestrian deaths, caused by vehicles,within a week of each other..a number of fender benders.. etc. Each and every day we have accidents in the Eugene/Springfield area? safe? don't bet on it
the camaro stays warm and dry inside till the nuts get done busting stuff up
Oh yay.. that time of year for my tailgate sign to get put on.. "Warning" you hit it- you bought it!
I live a few blocks from there, and people are nearly smashing into each other outside that Safeway on a normal day. It's amazing, isn't it Woody? A bit of slush on the ground, and everyone with an SUV drives like a maniac, going 20 mph faster than they do on dry pavement and tailgating everyone else. Meanwhile, everyone in a Prius drives 2 mph, when for once, the speed limit actually makes sense. Eugene drivers are the least capable I've ever seen outside a high-school parking lot.
 @Doc Yep, being awful drivers is what puts us on the 10 "best drivers" lists and keeps are accident rates below the national average.
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If only we drove like the complainers from places with higher accident rates!
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/snark
 @SkinnersGhost No one responsible for making those lists has ever driven here. Statistics give the average person just enough rope to hang themselves, and you're swinging in the wind.
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As I pointed out above, Eugene drivers don't report minor accidents, and the police decline to respond to some others. This happens in a lot of small towns, and skews the results heavily toward small cities like Eugene. The number that really matters is fatalities per mile, where we're right up the middle.
 @Doc absolutely
 @Doc I agree with that 100%
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and dont tailgate geez folks two 4x4 tailgated me on the way in while i was doing 55 on 126 passing cars then the toyota made a agressive turn from the fast lane to the 1-5 on ramp like dang folks get a clue
 @censoredirawoody My system, the bigger the truck, the slower I drive if they're tailgating. Big 4x4 with a gun rack driving on my bumper, it probably isn't safe to drive over 5mph.
@SkinnersGhost I like that idea
@censoredirawoody ---sounds like a bad combination of wreckless/inexperienced drivers with cautious/experienced drivers. This happens a lot in a town with more and more people migrating/vactioning here from the warmer climates. Best to just stay off the road if we can. I would recommend car pooling, but then that might just be more people in the car to die. In any event, dress warm in case you get stranded and broke down. If the car crash doesn't kill you, the cold will.
 @peace How do you reconcile that theory against Eugene having so many less accidents than the national average?
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My theory, we have so many less accidents that people think about it more when they see them, and so it makes a stronger impression on them.