A video of a school bus gracefully pirouetting down a neighborhood road, taking out a mailbox and colliding with a car, has been floating around the internet. Let me tell you exactly what was going on here. The town of Sutton, Massachusetts where this incident took place, is about 40 miles south of me and we suffered similar conditions.
My wife sent me this picture Tuesday of a tree next to our house. It was encased in ice. Freezing mist was the prevailing weather condition since Monday night, and it had taken its toll with downed trees and power lines as the ice built up on them overnight. Our driveway was (and still is) a sheet of ice, extremely treacherous if you’re not expecting it. Fortunately, the roads on my commute were treated well overnight, and just a little wet.
Still, many surrounding towns canceled school because black ice was everywhere. This appears to be exactly what happened in Sutton, where the bus suddenly found itself sideways, then sliding back down the road completely out of control. Yes, children were on board at the time, but WCVB reports that no one was hurt. The driver of the car that was hit had already exited the vehicle when he saw the bus coming and got out of the way.
Temperatures broke freezing during the day, but only barely, a far cry from the temperatures near 60 F that the forecasters predicted, and the mist turned into heavy rain. By the evening commute temperatures were dropping again, and once again the roads froze without any warning. As I drove around one of the final curves before home, I could feel that the car didn’t have as much grip as it should have. I wasn’t sliding (yet), but I could feel that I was about to if I asked any more of the tires, and I was not speeding. So I reduced my speed further and crawled the rest of the way home.
That is how a school bus ends up sliding down the road. Canceling school would have been the better move in such icy conditions. As a wise person once told me, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.