By Steven Symes 
Winter weather is already here in some parts of the country and will be here soon enough for others, so this footage of an icy highway pileup is an excellent warning. It’s like people get amnesia during the summer months, completely forgetting that once the white stuff coats roads they need to slow down and drive with greater caution, leading to big accidents like this one.
Get some Thanksgiving travel tips before you hit the road.
Recorded recently by a traffic camera in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this footage shows about a dozen cars slam into each other as they go too fast and make other mistakes on an Interstate 394 overpass. Please learn from their errors so you don’t get into a similar pileup.
First of all, you should be aware that bridges or overpasses will ice over long before the rest of a road. Those are areas to exercise additional caution, something these drivers fail to do.
They’re driving too fast for conditions, the first in a string of mistakes. Especially when you already see vehicles spun of on both shoulders like what we have at the beginning of this video, you need to slow down.
Another big mistake people make is quick inputs. They slam on the brakes, jerk on the steering wheel, and that’s a big no-no in slick conditions. Applying the brakes gradually, making lane transitions more slowly, or at least not jerking on the steering wheel, helps prevent slide-outs.
But the biggest thing you can do is address your tires. It’s best to have winter tires for conditions like this. Even if you don’t, driving around on properly inflated tires instead of ones that are underinflated is best since that ensures optimal traction.
Finally, if your car does start sliding, steering into the slide instead of away from it should help you gain control again. One would think people living in Minnesota know all this, and some in the video seem to follow these rules well, but that summer amnesia is serious stuff.
Image via Heartland Reporter/YouTube