It started snowing midafternoon today. One of my coworkers who has a 2 hour commute mentioned how much he disliked having to drive in the snow. I told him I didn’t mind it that much. So of course on the car ride home I almost splat myself broadsides into a Taurus.

It was snowing pretty hard when I left the office so I decided to take Route 1 instead of the highway because the roads were so bad and the highway turns into a turtle race in those conditions. As I came over the crest of a hill I noticed a car coming towards me flashing his lights. At first I thought….

…that he was trying to warn me of a cop ahead and it made me chuckle; I was only doing about 25 mph and the speed limit was 50. Then I noticed something in the road ahead, maybe 30-35 yards away. I started pumping my brakes and as I got closer I realized not one but three cars were in various phases of ‘not facing the right way’ on the road, including a Taurus station wagon completely broadsides to the flow of traffic. I was convinced I was going to hit it. I frantically pumped the brakes and almost decided to put the car into a power slide off the road, figuring it was better to end up in a ditch then hitting the Taurus, but I managed to bleed off enough speed and came to a stop about 10-15 feet from his car. It was one of those ‘leaves your hands shaking at the wheel’ kind of deals, you know, when you’ve had a close call and your adrenaline is flowing. The odd thing is, it was so dark and the snow was falling so hard that I didnt see any of the other people involved. The Taurus backed up and got itself facing the right way, the other two cars pulled back around to face the flow of traffic, and I proceeded on my way, an anonymous encounter between cars.

Thank goodness the good samaritan with the flashing lights was around or I’m sure I would have smacked into that car. I was going slow enough that it would have been relatively minor, but it still would have sucked. From now on I’m leaving early if the weather is bad like it was tonight.