Black Ice

Anyone who was on the roads in Southampton on Thanksgiving night, and who arrived home in one piece with nothing worse than a bad scare, has much to be thankful for.

Not long after twilight, snow unexpectedly began falling along a narrow corridor from Montauk Highway in Wainscott west to the Sunrise Highway and Flanders Road. It continued for perhaps two hours, long enough to turn a 15-mile stretch of fields white, but not long enough to accumulate on the roadway.

Instead, the dusting on the road melted, and then, propelled by a drop in temperature and a sharp freeze as night came on, it turned to a thin coat of black ice. The road glistened with what looked like rain; that was the only warning of what lay ahead.

Motorists on the Sunrise, perhaps not yet attuned to the mischievousness of winter weather, encountered the slick so suddenly that skidding was unavoidable. And yet they were lucky. Had the roads been more congested there might well have been a real tragedy.

As it was, traffic skidded and slithered to a crawl past a sports car that had crumpled against a guard rail near Flanders Road. The scene sobered a lot of drivers. Farther on, near the Texaco station, there was an overturned car on the shoulder. Fifty yards to the east there was another serious accident, this time involving two westbound cars, and there was to be yet a third that night in Water Mill, a three-car pileup that badly injured a 5-month-old.

There is not much drivers can do about black ice other than be on guard. Many assume four-wheel drive will keep them safe, but they are wrong: Sports utility vehicles, like other cars, have no traction on ice. Snow, yes, but not ice.

One driver we know puts the two right wheels of the car on the shoulder in icy conditions, reasoning that the shoulder is higher than the roadbed and will provide a measure of safety. That sounds worth trying. The best advice is to stay alert and to slow down. Caution is the watchword.