Black Ice Causes Problems in East Tennessee This Morning
With recent heavy rains followed by temperatures dipping into the teens in the early part of Thursday morning, the conditions were ripe for black ice on some East Tennessee roads. Black ice was reportedly responsible for at least a handful of auto wrecks in Knoxville alone. Black ice, by nature, is extremely difficult if not impossible to detect which means that drivers are not going to be able to ensure that they avoid patches of black ice regardless of how carefully they drive. However, it is advisable to make an effort to avoid places where ice patches are more likely to form when weather conditions are favorable for icy roads, such as shady spots on back roads and bridges and overpasses.
Driving slowly and carefully is an obvious way to avoid liability for negligence when conditions are favorable for black ice. Driving carefully will not ensure that a driver will avoid black ice-related accidents, but it will serve to potentially minimize the damage should such ice lead to an accident. More importantly, a driver could be found negligent for driving too fast in such conditions, so driving in a careful manner will eliminate that possibility.
Another good method of negligence avoidance in such conditions is to make sure any passengers in the car are properly using their safety restraint devices. This would both protect the passengers in the event encountering an unexpected icy patch leads to an accident and enable the driver to show that he was indeed trying to take proper safety precautions should such an accident lead to a lawsuit.
The most dangerous thing about black ice is that drivers simply have no way of detecting it. By the time a driver realizes they have encountered an icy patch, it is usually too late. Thus, drivers are better off just driving in a safe and careful manner at all times when they know conditions are favorable the formation of black ice patches.
Source: http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=107406&catid=2
