That news report failed to mention that where the accident happend (between junctions 1 - 5 of the M1) there are loads or road works and lanes going from three to one lane with merging requirements. There are also average speed cameras. At least there was the other week and it's been that way for a few months now.
I wonder if it was some cock who waited until the last minute to merge lanes, misjudged it and then had a choice of running into the traffic cones or the coach...
I've been living down south for almost 30 years & the worst snow I've seen has been a couple of inches - and everything ground to a halt simply because drivers couldn't cope - sliding all over the place or simply not being able to set off at all.
Only last February we had a 'severe weather warning' in the south east and I was expecting some kind of Siberian blizzard like we had in Feb 1991. We got a sprinkling of snow and everything shut down! My University closed the campus for lessons but that was only because the road to get to it was little more than a dirt track a couple of miles long. You can imagine what that would have been like with a load of fresh teenage drivers hammering along with no experience of slippery roads...
But the rest of the south east, they acted like a nuclear bomb had gone off! "Stay indoors", "don't go out", "Cancel your journeys", "Frankie say SNOW, hide yourself!"
p) all the warnings told us. So most people did, and they never get to experience really slippery conditions as a result.
Quite a contrast to when I started motoring on two wheels back in 1986. The only thing controlling what happend between the road and my bike was my brain. I had to ride through all weathers as it was my only form of transport, plus I rode through torrential rain, snow, ice, fog and freezing fog. Freezing fog was no fun as it caused my visor to ice up so I had to ride with it open. By the time I arrived at my destination I had ice in my eyebrows and eyelids and I couldn't move my face muscles!
In the process I learnt a lot of respect for the road and road condition and I learnt how to ride in treacherous conditions. Far more so than if I only drove a modern car that mollycoddled me and did half the work automatically. And yes, I did fall off a few times (black ice is no fun...) but believe me, shock and fear drum learning into your brain far quicker than any advertising campaign does or car brochure telling you how 'safe' a car is...
So with modern vehicles being equipped with traction control, esp, anti-lock brakes, onboard computers warning you of ice and bad driving conditions etc. it doesn't seem like they have much effect. Perhaps drivers need proper training to deal with slippery conditions/ bad visibilty rather than relying on their car to do the work. Or as Jeremy Clarkson once said, "The best way to make a driver drive safely is to have a six inch spike sticking out of the steering wheel". (It was something like that!)