Heckova crash on I75 near Gainesville...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/os-deadly-i-75-crash-20120129,0,6304073.story

Scary stuff. RIP for those that didn't make it.

Yup....heard about that yesterday...low visibility due to a grassfire

I was on my way from Daytona to Gainesville yesterday morning to pick up the Miata motor and trans from Dyintorace. Got diverted off to the East to 301, then in the back way into Gainesville. Thanks to his expertise, I went out to 27/US41, and took that back to Ocala and avoided all that!

Yep, interstate 75 and 441 are closed for a 26 mile stretch again today due to the same fire. RacerFink-glad you made it here and back OK yesterday. Interstate pileups are a scary thing!

That has to be a terrifying experience. Even if you are really paying attention, and come up to a solid fog bank and slow way down, there will be somebody behind you that isn't and doesn't. This happened at 4:30AM, so how many were fully awake or sober? Bad, bad combination of things. 10 dead, probably more to come. And that is a very pretty stretch of road.

You would think that they would have learned from previous experiences. I think lawyers are going to have a field day with this.

Bold added my me.

Before the crashes started about 4 a.m., authorities had briefly closed the road because of smoke and fog but had reopened it. A 62-acre fire broke out Saturday in Paynes Prairie, a wildlife area that straddles the freeway just south of Gainesville, but Ludie Bond, spokeswoman for the Florida Forest Service, said it was not clear how it started. Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell said deputies who were initially sent to the scene could see only a few inches in front of their faces. The pileup comes four years after a similar tragedy on Interstate 4 in Polk County: On Jan. 9, 2008, fog and smoke from a controlled burn that went out of control caused a 70-vehicle pileup about 4:30 a.m. that killed four people and left nearly 40 injured.

Um....dude, I'm in Polk County....We're quite a ways away from that accident on I-75. Google says two hours 18 minutest north. Of course, if you're saying that our whole state should have learned from the mistakes made here in Polk County, I can't disagree. I'll just counter by saying, this is FL....have you seen our news before?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/reasons-why-florida-is-the-craziest-state
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/reasons-why-florida-is-the-craziest-state

In this day and age, a couple of hours isn't too far away to hear about something and learn.

Not that we're doing any better diagonally across the country after getting one of these "lessons" in 1988.

Field burning causes pileup on I-5

I don't know if that specific highway has ditches, but whenever I park in fog/smoke conditions, I pull COMPLETELY off the road and into the ditch.

It also makes me wonder how that dude was parked or how quickly he came to a stop...

Mega-fog doesn't happen much around southern Ont., but mega-snow works the same way, I guess. Anyway, this tip was new to me when I heard it last year: If you pull off the road because you can't see where you're going, TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS. That way, some guy behind you trying to find his way won't mistakenly head right for you, thinking you're (a) on the road and (b) in motion. Makes sense. I would never have thought of that. (Also glad I never found out about it the hard way.)

As it turns out, a good friend of mine was doing a ride along with our Sheriff's office this past Saturday night/Sunday morning, as part of her local leadership group. She was among the first responders, both for the initial road closures as well as the subsequent accident scene(s). I haven't gotten the full debrief, but her initial comments regarding the episode are terribly sad.

News last night said the origins of the fire were thought to be suspicious.

I once hit really bad fog in central Ca. while travelling between L.A. and SFO. on I-5. At 40 MPH I didn't think I could see well enough to go much further without the risk of running into something so I pulled off onto the farther edge of the shoulder and put on my emergency flashers...in case someone might run into me.

Fog and smoke, somehow I've run into them a lot quicker than snow when driving. At least with snow, you can sort of see it coming. Fog? Seems like it falls on you like a blanket you don't see falling on you.