Opinion: Accident reports should be required reading

Talk about it

I’m coming to the conclusion that highway accident reports should be required reading for anyone who is driving on South Dakota roads.

I just finished four days on the road, traveling with Nancy, our daughter and her husband and their daughter. We went to the Black Hills for an extended family reunion and managed to get in a couple of days of sight-seeing, too. It was my truck — big enough to hold the five of us, all of our luggage and a couple of coolers — so I did the bulk of the driving.

Many times during the trip, as we approached one traffic predicament or another, I found myself thinking of accident reports I’d read over the years that dealt with similar situations. I was able to recall enough detail to make myself nervous as I approached a blind curve, a 65-mph stretch of head-to-head traffic on the interstate or a detour that required motorists to reduce speed to no more than 30 mph.

I’ll give you an example. There’s a stretch of construction on Interstate 90 out between Cactus Flats and Kadoka. For a while, the traffic is down to one lane and the speed limit is 65 mph. At the end of that stretch, crews apparently are working on the deck of a bridge at an exit. Traffic is directed down the off ramp, across the intersecting road and back up the on ramp to the interstate. When a vehicle nears the off ramp, the marked speed is 30 mph.

That sounds simple enough, but as we approached that spot, I recalled an accident report that dealt with the exact same set of circumstances. In that incident, a truck approached the off ramp at about 70 mph, swooped down the incline and rolled (or at least turned over) as it reached the bottom and attempted to make the turn to the on ramp. I said as much to the passengers in my vehicle on Sunday as we slowed for the off ramp. I don’t hear so well these days, but I could swear somebody in the back seat said, “Is he ever going to stop with the gloomy stories?”

I suppose I had been overdoing it. On the way west three days earlier, we had approached one of those “right lane closed” markers and a sign warning that the speed limit was about to drop from 75 mph to 65 mph. I was traveling in the right lane, nearing the orange cones that gradually taper across that lane and move traffic into the left lane. I was also letting my speed bleed off, ready to hit 65 just as I reached the official speed limit sign.

As I looked in my mirrors to see that the left lane was clear for me to enter, I saw a huge, black pickup, dual rear wheels, a giant mouth of chrome across the front, menace in every line. It was already in the right lane, quite a ways back but bearing down at what seemed a terrific rate of speed.

The details from another crash report popped into my head. In that one, a motorist in a minivan had just made the transition to the open lane and slowed to the posted speed and, wham, a truck plowed into the back of the vehicle. The truck had made the lane change but somehow missed the speed change. It might have been one of several reports I’ve seen in recent days in which a driver was asleep.

“You have to get over to the other lane,” Nancy told me.

“Can’t,” I said. “This guy behind me isn’t slowing down. I read a report with this very situation.”

The black pickup behind me did slow eventually. I made the lane change, tragedy was averted and we all motored on.

I still don’t think it hurts to know how easily simple situations can turn into crashes. I spent the entire trip making sure my family knew.

Terry Woster’s columns are published Wednesdays and Saturdays in The Daily Republic.

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