[HN Gopher] Parking under overpass in severe weather is 'spectac...
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Parking under overpass in severe weather is 'spectacularly
dangerous'
Author : pigtailgirl
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-05-23 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theweathernetwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theweathernetwork.com)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It should come as no surprise that having neither situational
| awareness or common sense is often hazardous to one's health,
| wallet or both.
|
| You can find innumerable examples of this concept at work but any
| behavioral rule of thumb you attempt to write using any handful
| of examples will have so many exceptions it will be about as
| useful as a coin toss to anybody so lacking in situational
| awareness and common sense that they needed the rule of thumb to
| help them in the first place.
|
| Nobody has infinite cognitive ability and the less you have the
| more valuable any one bit is so the temptation to replace
| thinking with rules of thumb is understandable and has merit but
| trying to replacing thinking with crap rules "do/don't park
| here/there during inclement weather" is well beyond the point
| where diminishing returns become a fool's errand. There is simply
| no replacement for situational awareness and common sense.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > It should come as no surprise that having neither situational
| awareness or common sense is often hazardous to one's health,
| wallet or both.
|
| Common sense says that getting under shelter during a storm is
| a good idea. If your common sense is more scientific and
| evolved, that's great for you, but I'm one of the people who
| needed to be told that an underpass can be a dangerous place to
| hide, so maybe just be glad that you're smarter than the
| average bear and don't waste too much effort looking down at
| the rest of us?
| [deleted]
| suprjami wrote:
| What a woeful website. Giant banner for cookies, overlay autoplay
| DRM video taking up half the screen multiple times. I gave up.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| You might not have a choice!
|
| If enough people in front of you have stopped under the overpass,
| so will you. Sometimes visibility is so reduced that being in an
| underpass is a relief.
|
| I once emerged from an underpass after a particularly severe
| storm (possibly tornado) only to find an 18-wheeler stopped,
| facing me, a short distance from the over pass. He had obviously
| been blown across the grass median from the opposite traffic
| lane. The rain was so intense that I didn't perceive the truck
| until I was only a few car-lengths away.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| My California-based family stopped briefly under a bridge
| during a Nebraska thunderstorm, due to the hail. We had more
| experience with snow, but this was summer. Hail happens in
| California but not necessarily as big as this was.
| craftkiller wrote:
| The article seems to state that parking _in the middle of the
| road_ is spectacularly dangerous. Nothing it states seems to
| suggest that parking on the shoulder under a bridge is dangerous.
| Based on the title, I was expecting warnings about bridge
| collapse.
| cronix wrote:
| They should have done a better job in the _article_ but the
| dangers were explicitly mentioned in the first video talking
| about how the air pressure greatly changes under the bridge
| accelerating the wind speeds and can suck you out, which
| happened to a news crew in the 90 's sheltering under an
| overpass.
| chrismeller wrote:
| TLDR: safe from the storm, at high risk of other drivers ramming
| into you because you're an idiot and stopped in the middle of the
| road.
| cduzz wrote:
| Actually in the first video the guy says "don't seek shelter
| under an overpass because the wind can get compressed through
| the smaller space and accelerate the velocity of the air,
| pulling you out of the area."
|
| I'd hate to be the demonstration the Venturi effect in a
| tornado.
|
| And of course, also I imagine you can get hit by another car
| also on the highway in a chaotic situation with poor visibility
| and lots of other distractions.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's a little amazing they didn't bother to summarize in the
| text and assumed everyone would watch the video. That's
| actually a very interesting piece of information and deserved
| more real estate in the article than stopping creates a road
| hazard - duh.
| postalrat wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Qu7cgwJmw
|
| I wouldn't want to be in the open either.
| cronix wrote:
| I don't know if there really is a safe place except
| underground in a storm shelter.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKDSt6SAeuM
| cduzz wrote:
| Modern buildings have a second building in them, the
| stairwells, which are probably about as good as it gets
| if you're unable to get underground.
|
| High wind speeds are astonishingly destructive. I guess
| I'd rather be in my car than on foot when wandering
| around tornado class weather, but at that point I've
| already lost the bet and should have stayed home.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Above-ground bermed reinforced concrete structures would
| be a pretty good bet -- less issues with flooding than a
| bunker, but it's still resistant to wind and things the
| wind carries with it.
|
| Wal-Mart's data center in Missouri, bermed and built
| directly on bedrock:
|
| https://cryptome.org/eyeball/walmart/walmart-birds.htm
| taldo wrote:
| And while this refers to parking under an elevated bridge /
| overpass, parking in an underpass, or even a slightly-under-
| ground-level pass is probably an even worse idea. They tend to
| flood.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| I was expecting new information i hadn't considered about an
| elevated risk of flash flooding under underpasses,or similar, but
| instead it's just that unexpected stopped traffic in shit
| visibility is a recipe for a pile up, which is obviously true.
|
| I will continue to pull well off the shoulder under an underpass
| to ride out lightning storms on my motorcycle and not fret too
| much about getting washed away when I do so. Rain isn't a
| problem, generally, but the conspicuous lack of a faraday cage
| around me on a bike means a roof can be a good friend in an
| electrical storm.
| thecrumb wrote:
| These would be the folks who immediately turn on their hazard
| lights when it starts to rain.
| bluedino wrote:
| Or that have a medium-sized package in their trunk, which then
| won't close. Hazard lights and 20mph under the speed limit!
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(page generated 2022-05-23 23:02 UTC)