Smoke and Haze Become Deadly Combination in Florida - 10 Dead

It always amazes me that people worry on global terrorism and space invaders, flesh eating bacteria and natural disasters yet they don't worry on the every day dangers such as smoke and fog covering a dark highway in the middle of the night.

They worry on aliens out there who don't like the job we are doing on Planet Earth, yet they don't check the many sites available online before they take a short trip across the state.

Why would you drive fast on a foggy road in the middle of nowhere? And, yet...they do.

Fog in Florida in December is common, not a rare Category Four Hurricane and it is deadlier as people are out on the road racing back to school or cutting across the state on their way somewhere and they don't appreciate the dangers out there the way they hunker down and stay inside when a Category 4 storm is about to make landfall.

I can save more lives on this blog by begging people to check out weather conditions before they travel locally, than ironically warning people to board up for a hurricane in Florida. Go figure... ironic but true.

Read this article and think on it next time you travel and then do a quick check on the web for traffic road and weather conditions before you decide which route to take and when to travel. Speed kills and speed kills absolutely on a smokey, foggy night in the middle of the night.

http://www.toledoblade.com/Nation/2012/01/30/I-75-crashes-in-Florida-
leave-10-dead-18-hurt-1.html

http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/interstate/

While Florida is known for sunny beaches, lightning strikes in Tampa and tropical weather...December and January often bring foggy nights. Add into that mix a nearby brush fire and you have a deadlier cocktail than Camille on the Beach.

Happens frequently, yet people don't seem to worry on it in the same way they worry about sharks swimming offshore near Cape Cod.

www.weather.com has a travel page that allows you to pick your form of travel, your direction on a highway and shows you in details where you need to be careful and not speed.

The State offers sites.

http://www.fl511.com/Alerts.aspx is another site.

One car on the highway was warned by a friend traveling up ahead to slow down because of the poor visibility before they got caught in the traffic jam, seconds before the accident that took the life of the man who was sitting in the car next to them talking to them through their open windows about the traffic delay.

I grew up in Florida, piled into the car at 4 AM in Miami with friends and family headed north towards Disney World thinking "what the heck" or some other words I won't publish here. We drove north thinking it would lift and yet it didn't. It took two hours to get north of Ft. Lauderdale as we slowly made our way northbound waiting for the sun to burn off the worst of it. Mid-Winter Vacation was always marred by foggy trips on the Turnpike. Add in smog and it creates a death toll bigger than a Category Two hurricane.

http://www.alligator.org/news/local/article_0cae3658-4b0b-11e1-b8dc-001871e3ce6c.html

I didn't have to surf the web to know students would be involved on their way back to school.

Steven R. Camps of Gainesville described it as looking like the "end of the world" and so it was for the people in the car next to him who died upon impact in the deadly accident.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/29/2615070/pileup-on-smoky-i-75-kills-at.html?asset_id=2614739&asset_type=gallery

Again, next time you decide to take a trip in the middle of the night... check out this site or others like it to find out what the possible weather conditions might be. And, sometimes staying over an extra few hours or a day is worth the delay than taking your chances on a foggy road in the middle of the night and hoping some car in a rush behind you is not going 80 mph despite the dangerous road conditions.

http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/interstate/

Besos Bobbi