Talking Michigan Transportation

Polar vortex, winter storms test driver responsibility

• Michigan Department of Transportation • Season 8 • Episode 253

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On this week’s edition of the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, conversations about the vital message to drive to the conditions, especially during winter storms.

First, Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Michael Shaw offers his insights on the causes of multi-vehicle crashes like the one that occurred between Hudsonville and Zeeland in Ottawa County on I-196 Monday, Jan. 19.

Later, Bruce Smith, a National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist in Grand Rapids, talks about how the NWS defines various warnings and advisories and what was in place Monday when the crashes occurred.

Jeff Cranson:

Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. Today I wanted to talk about driving in winter weather and driving for conditions, which is often preached by safety advocates, both in law enforcement and transportation officials. We had uh a very bad multi-vehicle crash on the west side of the state on Monday, uh January 19th in Ottawa County. Um, it raised questions uh among some media, as these things always do, about what can be done to prevent it. Obviously, the biggest thing that can be done to prevent these crashes is people heeding the calls of the National Weather Service to not travel during these kinds of winter events. Uh, if you have to drive very slowly and leave plenty of distance. First, I spoke with First Lieutenant Michael Shaw of the Michigan State Police, who has always been a very eloquent spokesperson on these issues and talks in detail about what it means to drive for conditions and drive with personal responsibility. So he had some very interesting things to say. And then I spoke with Bruce Smith, the meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids, about these kinds of storms and pop-up squalls and how these things happen and what they do to try to anticipate it and all of their efforts to warn people about what to do and not to do during these storm events, which obviously includes driving. So I hope you enjoy both conversations. Again, the first guest today is First Lieutenant Michael Shaw of the Michigan State Police. He's been on the podcast before and I think does an outstanding job of breaking down these issues and explaining things and mostly underscoring the most important message for all of us, which is drive for conditions. Lieutenant Shaw, thank you as always for taking time to do this. Uh, you know, first I I want to talk to you about not just so much that crash, that multi-vehicle crash in Ottawa County, but um just what you've seen, probably other multi-vehicle crashes or pile-ups as they're sometimes called um over the years. What's the common denominator?

SPEAKER_01:

So we all know that the common denominator is probably two really that you kind of see in these. And and I think I want to break it down a little bit. A lot of people look at it, and you know, we saw the media headlines, you know, 100-car pileup and all that kind of stuff. Actually, what it is, it's a small crash at the beginning, and then people are either driving too fast or driving too close to each other, and we have several smaller secondary crashes that happen after it. So this doesn't count as a 100-person crash or 100-vehicle crash. Um, these are probably about 10, 12, 15 other crashes, and usually what happens, and and uh for our NASCAR fans out there, I kind of equate it to the same thing is when you look at the motor speedways, Daytona, you know, it's Talladega, uh, when it gets down to the very end and they're all jockeying for position, um, these are professional drivers, mind you. Um, we always say, and the announcers say, you know, oh, it's time for the big one, right? And and I always look at it the same way because we see the same factors that happen is they're all packed together in one little spot, which we saw in this crash out there on the west side of the state. Um, people are driving too fast, they're they're driving too close together, and it only takes one person, one person to touch a brake, uh, one person to skid in the back, whatever it is. And then you see the multitude of crashes behind it. Um, because these are just average Michiganders behind the wheel. They're not, you know, NASCAR drivers and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, we we see that often with all of these types of crashes. Um, is it's just somebody's going too fast for conditions. Um, anybody that was doing the speed limit that day um was wrong. So there's just no way you should be doing that. So uh we have to realize that here in Michigan, weather changes, it changes all the time. I mean, we know that it can be sunny one day, one second, uh rain, and then get a little snow afterwards, and then maybe we get some windy conditions and fog. And it can all happen all four seasons in one day in Michigan.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, so it's a joke we've all heard. If you grew up in Michigan, it's like if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, wait five minutes, right? So um, I know that we rely on the National Weather Service to kind of tell us, you know, what it looks like, and normal drivers, it shouldn't just be me as a law enforcement or you mot. Um, normal drivers before they start their day should take a look at the weather and see what it looks like. And if they have uh conditions of you know a winter storm, uh if they have different types of warnings, things like that, you kind of heat it and then you drive for those conditions. And I always try to tell people is you know, we look at we look at education, you know, we we have towards zero deaths, you know, we have safer by 2030. Um, if you read any of my social media, um, I'm telling people every day to slow down and increase their driving distance. And then we have enforcement that goes along with it, but we can't ticket our way out of these crashes and and we can't educate it. There's a third component or that third leg of the stool that we're missing, and people aren't gonna like it, but I'm gonna say it anyways, and that's personal responsibility, right? It's a lot of personal responsibility to get behind a wheel of the car. Uh, you're responsible for everybody in that car, you're responsible for everybody around that car. Um, and that's your job when you get behind the wheel is to make sure you're driving at a speed that is safe for everybody else around you. You're making sure that everybody has their seat belts on. Uh, you're making sure that you're not trying to draft anybody, that you're actually, you know, we we all remember the old rule from driver's ed, right? Uh, one car link for every 10 miles an hour. Um, you know, by just looking at the drone footage of that, there was nobody that was doing that out there. And you can look at any video on the roadways at times, and you know, no one is at you know 70 miles an hour allowing seven car links between them and the car in front of them. Because if they were, yeah.

Jeff Cranson:

That's a whole nother frustration, right? That if you have adaptive cruise control and it's automatically setting that distance, and then somebody comes up and fills in that gap, so then you, yeah, then you're then your technology backs you up further and somebody else fills it in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, and and then we we could actually say, you know, the the biggest people complain, and this is my other pet peeve with the the zipper merge is you know, people say the zipper merge never worked because there's not enough distance. Well, of course there's not enough distance because you're following too closely to the to the guy or girl in front of you, so that's why there's not enough distance. So that's how these all these crashes happen. And I'm sure in this one, when you know Ottawa gets done looking at this one, the the sheriff's office looks at it. Um, it's going to be one person that did something, some type of risky driving behavior, you know, slammed on the brake, found too closely, lost control of their vehicle, and then everybody else goes through there. So then, you know, I get it a lot too. It'll be like, well, you know, it was a white out condition. But you know what? The cops got there, fire trucks got there, ambulances got there, uh, buses got there to take all the drivers that got in the crash and took them someplace else. And you know what they didn't do? They didn't crash. And the reason they didn't crash is because they were driving responsibly. So we have to kind of look at ourselves. And I always tell people, you know, that weather doesn't cause crashes, drivers do. And if you want to know who's at fault in most of these crashes, that's what we give you a rear viewer mirror for. Just take a look in that mirror and you'll figure out who caused that crash, right? So you know, that's yeah, and that's kind of how we have to look at it is a lot of it is just that risky driving behavior. I mean, just today in Detroit, you know, that we got two, three inches. We're Michigan for crying out loud. That's not a lot of snow. Two, three inches, and you know, we're up to uh 35, I believe, at my last count, uh preventable traffic crashes where people were just going too fast and tailgating and and not paying attention.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, that's the the problem, is that uh I I tell our engineers sometimes that you're victims of your own success. You've created a mindset, a system that my 20-minute commute should always be 20 minutes, no matter what, right? And um, and I especially like that you touched on driving responsibility. Lawmakers, both at the federal and state level, who often talk about personal responsibility, were some of the first people to be critical after that massive crash, now 11 years ago, this same time of year during a major winter storm on I-94 near near Galesburg. Um, and you recall you and your colleagues got a lot of grief for handing out. I mean, there were 193 vehicles, and you handed out 60 some citations, which should have sent a message to people that yeah, this was your fault.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think that's what we really have to start to look at when we look at these crashes. You know, we're we're changing the mindset as we go along, right? It used to be accidents and you know, oh sorry, you know, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, hey, these are crashes, these are preventable incidences where somebody or somebody's did something that they shouldn't have done to cause these vehicles to collide with each other. Right. And I always tell people, too, when you look at it, it's not just for winter driving, but if you're driving too fast and you're tailgating the car in front of you, and a deer steps out in front of that car in front and you can't stop and you end up rear-ending somebody, you know, it's the same instance. It could be a snowstorm, it could be, you know, anything, foggy weather. Um, if you don't have those basic fundamentals, uh, when the weather gets bad, then your risky driving behaviors are really gonna show um when you get into that crash.

Jeff Cranson:

So you talked a little bit about the media reporting, and um you had some very good comments in a Detroit Free Press story. I uh I would definitely quibble with the the premise of the story, the headline in the lead, which posed a question about whether you know roads should be closed proactively when these storms pop up. Um, you were uh I think eloquently dismissive of that. Talk about why that is.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I think the hardest part is when we start to talk about snow squalls, it's a quick snow event, maybe five, six, seven minutes tops in duration. By the time you had people out there um that could catch up to where that snow is it's over. So you couldn't close the road in time. So that means preemptively closing the road before it happens. So if we look at today, um we had a winter weather advisory across my entire district, which is Wayne Oakland, Macomb County. Um, if we were to go on the premise that the reporters from the free press asked about, um, that's me shutting every freeway down in Metro Detroit until the snowstorm was over. I think you get any complaints about that. Uh I did hate mail when we closed the roadway for traffic crash investigations. I would imagine that the hate mail that I would receive by people, if I just said, okay, guys and gals, um, we might have some snow. Uh, let's close the roads for everybody for six hours. Um, you're gonna have to get around in the side streets. Um, we have 696 clothes in my area here, and you know, I hear about it every day. Um, I could imagine shutting down every major roadway, wondering if there's a crash. Or, you know, we could do the smart thing about it, and hey, let's adjust our driving behavior when the weather gets bad. And you know, I one of the things I say is uh the snow that I hate is is the one to three inch mark because drivers overestimate their ability when it's of that amount of snow. If it's gonna snow, I want 12 to 15 inches. I mean, if you can get that amount of snow where it just makes you slow down and increase those driving distances, that's when we see less crashes is during that time period. We actually see more crashes the less snow it is because people look at it, um, especially and and I I have a pickup truck, I have a four-wheel drive, but our four-wheel drives folks you know overestimate the ability of their pickup trucks and their four-wheel drives to really handle that weather because all it does, it does great getting you in traction and stuff like that, but you turn the wheel and it's four-wheel slide, not four-wheel drive anymore. And you're doing the same thing that all the other passenger cars are doing.

Jeff Cranson:

I've never heard that, but I have noticed uh plenty of times on the freeways when there are slide-offs that just as many or more are four-wheel or all-wheel drive vehicles, um, which which, you know, the advent of that technology is great in a lot of ways, but it does create a false sense of confidence. It doesn't do you any good on ice.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that's what happens is you're driving along in those less, you know, less amounts of snow. It's got that traction on it. You're you're feeling good about yourself, you're going along, and then all of a sudden the car in front of you starts to hit the brakes for whatever reason, you're driving a little bit too close to that car in front of you, and then you slam on your brakes, and that's when you find out, oh, underneath that little one inch of snow is a little bit of black ice, and now you're in the ditch. So I think that's a lot of times what happens to those drivers is they they gain the confidence of feeling like, oh, I've got this under control. I got my big, you know, RAM, and everything's great, uh, until you hit that little bit of ice, and then you find out that those four tires slide just as much as everybody else's did.

Jeff Cranson:

And you've you know spent a career like a lot of law enforcement officers and uh and transportation officials who who are very concerned about safety. And you've talked about this for a long time, um, probably have built up tremendous credibility with the media and in the Metro Detroit area and elsewhere, because you know, you talk, you'll talk about this to anybody anytime because it's something you're very passionate about, clearly. So when it's slippery pavement or low visibility or something else, there's always a lot of research into the words, the words that work. You know, how do we how do we uh communicate with people who a lot of times are tuning us out because you might as well be saying eat your vegetables, right? It's just like the message just gets gets lost. But I've come to cringe at terms like whiteout and black ice because it takes the responsibility off the driver. It's like, well, it wasn't my fault, you know, this this thing happened. So I I mean, obviously you get frustrated with it, but you stay at it. I guess how do you persevere with that um the way you do?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think for me too, as I kind of look at it as you know, we look at all how people, you know, get affected by crime or you know, drug overdoses and things like that. But I've always found it interesting that you know, we we fight that, you know, we want to get less victims of gun crime, we want to get less people to overdose. But when it comes to traffic fatalities, it's just like, eh, that's kind of part of the deal. You know, oh, you drive a car, you might die. I mean, you know, that's the simplified way of saying it, but I don't think people really realize. I mean, again, last year, and it looks like you know the numbers are the year before, and now last year, the numbers are gonna be the same. And over a thousand people died on Michigan roadways in preventable traffic crashes. I mean, these were all preventable crashes. There's no, there's no accidents out there, there's nothing out there at all. These somebody did something that they shouldn't have done from either speeding, following too closely, driving distracted, even though we have a hands-free law, you know, driving uh under the influence of of you know marijuana or alcohol, there's some type of factor that you know these people didn't die. And and and I wonder, and you know, everybody's got an opinion, right? We all know what they say about opinions, but you know, I think as cars evolve and the technology gets better in cars and they're safer and they're quieter, and you're all it's almost like you're almost isolated from everybody else on the roadway anymore. So uh it's like you're just in your own little world and you're driving around, and no, you're not really affected by those are actual people in that car next to you, or those are people in the car in front of you or behind you, you know, and you're just kind of driving around. And you know, it I think we saw that with uh the the wave, right? You know, and and I'm you know, I I tell anybody I'm 61 years old. I I've been driving for a long time, I've been in a department for a long time, had a career in the military beforehand, and we always remember the wave, right? Now you may mumble to yourself you're in a wave, yeah. If you would have paid attention, you wouldn't have to cut in front of me now, but go ahead and go, you know. Um, we don't see that anymore because I think a lot of people don't realize that's another human being in that car, which I think picks up our road rage incidences and something. I I would never imagine at the beginning of my law enforcement career that I would respond to an incident where somebody shot a gun at somebody else because they didn't use their turn signal.

Jeff Cranson:

Right, right. It's it is you know it's dehumanizing. If you if you came around the aisle in the grocery store with your cart and there was somebody else there, you'd say, Oh, go ahead, you know, excuse me. But yeah, because you see them face to face. But you're right, the the vehicles make it so it's not a real person. I I've had that same thought for a long time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And again, you know, that's that's Mike Shaw's opinion, not of the the state police or anything else. But I think that is part of it that we don't, you know, look at each other as a partner on the roadway of letting somebody in, or else, you know, people just don't think they missed their exit. And you know, we've seen actual video of people stopping in the middle of a freeway and turning on their turn signal, waiting to get on to their to their exit. You know, we just don't think about things like that anymore. It's my hope, you know, with my my little bit of time left in this career and afterwards that you know we can kind of get people to think about back being responsible and being responsible for for your car and your people, and you know, maybe being responsible for the the guy and gal next to you and saying, okay, you know, I need to slow down or I need to increase my my following distance because if I don't and they don't stop in time and I have to slam on my brakes, I'm not gonna be able to stop in time either. So uh we would like to get down to you know our safer by 2030 reduction, hoping for you know a 30% reduction, and and sooner or later, hopefully maybe we don't have so many traffic fatalities. But I can tell you losing a thousand people on our roadways uh in preventable crashes, it it's horrible.

Jeff Cranson:

No, we we certainly wouldn't accept 10 planes going down with 100 people on each. That's that that would be completely unacceptable. So you're you're right. Well, thank you as always. I appreciate your passion and uh the the work you do to message this and your advocacy for the safety of our fellow citizens. Um, I always say we can't human-proof the system. We we all make mistakes, right? That's why pencils have erasers. But the most important thing, I think, is to own up to our mistakes and not to to blame somebody or something else.

SPEAKER_01:

So absolutely. I think that's the most important part. You know, I you don't want to go back to the, you know, the Marvel movies, you know, and responsibility and and things like that. But I think that's the most important part of it is just to kind of remember when you get behind the the wheel of a vehicle. You're responsible for it. And it's up to you as a driver to keep yourself, your passengers, and everybody else on the roadway safe. And the way you do that is, you know, driving for road conditions, you know, increasing your following distance, staying off the phone and never, ever, ever driving paired. Well said.

Jeff Cranson:

So thanks again, Lieutenant Shaw. I appreciate it. And please uh stay with me because next I'll be talking to Bruce Smith from the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids about some of his observations concerning that crash and crashes overall and how weather relates to that. Stay with us. We'll have more on the other side of this important message.

MDOT Announcement:

Michigan law requires drivers to maintain at least 200 feet behind a snowplow when crews are plowing or treating roads and have their lights on. This does not apply when passing the snowplow. In addition, stay at least 20 feet away when the plow is stopped or at an intersection. Failure to do so can result in a fine of$100. The law is meant to ensure snowplow operators have the proper space and time to clear the roads. This makes Michigan's roads and neighborhoods safer to drive on and walk around throughout the winter. Always remember, snowplows need room to groom.

Jeff Cranson:

Explaining, you know, what these levels of warnings mean and you know why they advise drivers to, you know, heed the call to stay off the roads during these kinds of conditions and only travel if it's really an emergency. So thank you very much for taking time to be here. Um could you talk about that? How, you know, the the various levels of advisories and warnings that MWS issues and what they mean. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Uh folks who lived in Michigan for any amount of time know that we get our share of winter weather. And this was uh not necessarily an unusual event. It was preceded by a winter storm watch, which we put out for both big broad storms that impacted a big chunk of the state, as well as lake effect snow. And that was issued two days prior to the tragic pile-up there on I-196. Uh, that watch was issued about three o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday. And then we upgraded that to a winter storm warning, uh, roughly 30 hours before the incident, and that was at uh 3.51 a.m. Sunday morning. So the warning was out for a good chunk of West Michigan, uh, very typical of Lake Effect snow with gusty west-northwest winds coming across the lake and uh lake effect snow on the downwind shore. This was a particularly um uh well, not unique, but but uh impactful event because it was the cold of air mass we had of the season thus far. And that type of snow is very small flake sizes, which will often reduce visibility more than other times. And then you combine that with the with the temperatures that were down into the low teens. This is not my area of expertise, but I understand that does impact the ability of some of the treatments we put on roads to to effectively keep things uh liquid as opposed to frozen. So when people drive on that, it creates that layer of ice, and that's what led to uh the unfortunate event.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, so I think one of the things that you talked about, and I think you know, you made the the point very well, is that look, um, these things happen so quickly, and and Lieutenant Shaw talked about it too. Um, the question the free press posed was something that I think others have asked. They think, you know, if you know ahead of time that conditions are going to be that bad, uh, why don't you just close the road? You know, he was dismissive of that notion, um, the impracticality of it. But is that something that you've ever contemplated, you and your colleagues at the Weather Service?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, certainly the National Weather Service doesn't have the direct authority to close roads. Uh we use verbiage more along the lines of uh, in fact, we did with this event, and I'll read it verbatim. You know, whiteout conditions are expected uh that will make travel conditions treacherous uh and potentially life-threatening. So our hope is that potential travelers will heed that advice and and uh plan ahead with you know a day or two advanced notice of these kind of conditions uh and and change our travel plans. But um, you know, we don't directly say do not travel per se or work with um with state entities to close roads. I think that's an incredibly rare event that they would even consider that.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, it is, and that's the the point Lieutenant Shaw made that um can you imagine? I mean, they get complaints when they have to close a road just to investigate a crash. Imagine if they preemptively closed roads because of uh storms.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, and you know, Jeff, that that brings up a good point. You know, to preemptively close a road. Now, some would say, I suppose, that that I know that there's gates out in the western U.S. on some of these expressways, and that won't even let folks on the on-ramp to get on expressways for really widespread blizzard conditions without with limited infrastructure, people going tens of uh miles in the middle of nowhere, and they look hold roads out there, but you know, downwind of Lake Michigan with Lake Effect Snow, it's a little different beast. Um, and you can't really isolate the areas that are going to be most impacted because, you know, in this case, from Traverse City down through Manasea and Moskegan, all the way down to Beton Harbor, it's basically the same conditions. And to pick out that one corridor where there's going to be a pile-up because radar suggests that the snow is so much heavier. We just we just uh it that's not the way lake effects snow behaves in West Michigan. It's what we call multi-band lake effects. So it's not a single band, it's many wind parallel bands that are setting up, and every one of those bands can produce the kind of conditions uh that were coincident with the with the pile-up.

Jeff Cranson:

What is it that is it is it elevation? Why is it that you do notice that you you might get these squalls and they seem maybe more intense in certain segments of roads? I mean, I've noticed it north of Grand Rapids on 131, south of Grand Rapids in Alleghen County, certainly uh on on as you said, you know, 196, I-94 as you get closer to the lake. Is that mostly about just the the elevation that you're at?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh not necessarily. Now, now I worked uh at the Gaylord office of the National Weather Service for over 20 years, and there were certain areas and corridors that would set up that would tend to be a little bit more intense than others. But down here, it's more, again, just these multi-bands. Um, there are some complex interactions with the shoreline and the fetch length across Lake Michigan that will impact some of the uh localized intense bands. But by and large, it's it's more just you're in it, you're out of it, you're in it, you're out of it as as you go through these lake effects snow bands.

Jeff Cranson:

So you should just keep in mind that uh when you get in the clear, it doesn't mean you're gonna stay in the clear. Right.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's that's often what makes these events so so treacherous is that people think maybe they're in the clear, uh, they moved out of the snow, and only you know, five, ten miles down the road they run back into a lake effect snow band, and people will accelerate somewhat between if they move out of the snow and then they're back into it. So that sort of slinky effect uh is you know kind of sets the stage for these kinds of accidents. Yeah.

Jeff Cranson:

Well, I appreciate your insight and uh especially the comments that you you made to media uh explaining this so that it it it very much uh dovetails and and supports what the state police and other police agencies are saying about you know knowing the conditions before you go. And if you have to drive when when it's that severe, slow down and leave plenty of distance. And I I think you uh you supported that with your comments. So I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03:

We we've talked about this event uh just in fact, just a half hour ago. I was talking with some of the folks here in the office. And when you have an impact, you know, our our our mission is to issue forecasts and warnings to mitigate impacts from weather. And when something like that happens, we're always thinking about what we could have done different. And what I reminded the folks uh is that what you can't necessarily measure are the people that that did change their plans and didn't travel, uh, and potentially the lives that were saved because of that. Unfortunately, we can't measure it. We only see the the accidents that do occur, but you're exactly right. We encourage people to feed the forecast and uh adjust their plans as appropriate.

Jeff Cranson:

Yeah, well, it's an it's important work, and I'm glad you and your colleagues are are talking about that, doing a bit of a post-mortem, and uh it will be interesting maybe down the road to talk about it more and see if you know if you feel like you did learn anything coming out of it. Absolutely. Thank you again. You're welcome, Jeff. I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Machine Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzz Sprout. I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who posts the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast to various platforms, and Jackie Stelinus, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.