Heavy snowfall makes for rough driving conditions Blandford, Mass (WWLP) – If you’re in the Berkshires or Western Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin Counties, you want to take extra caution on the roads. 22News was in Blandford Wednesday night tracking the snowfall as it piled up. “Thank God there was this rest stop here and I could get off. I literally couldn’t see anything,” said Lynn Aubin, who was driving on the Mass Pike. The snow was coming down and hard Wednesday night in the Berkshires. In Blandford, one woman was forced to pull over. “It’s very slippery and risky. You don’t know what’s underneath you. You know you could stop and go off to the right or you could go left, and hit the car in front of you,” said Aubin. One car traveling east on I-90 spun out after the driver mistook a truck ramp for an exit, and skid out of control. Luckily she was not injured. MassDOT hasn’t just been plowing the highways, they’ve also been laying down layers of salt-sand mixture to make the roads extra safe for you. That mixture helps to melt some of the ice and improve tire traction. 22News spoke with MassDOT, which has some recommendations for drivers. “Biggest issue we have out here for our safety and everyone else’s is people just going too fast. Over confidence in 4-wheel drive is a huge one. It will make you go but it won’t make you stop,” said Sean Foley, with MassDOT’s highway maintenance crew. The speed was reduced to 40mph on the Mass Pike Wednesday night. Truck drivers said they had a particularly rough time on the roads. “Most cars don’t understand,” said Kema Brown, a truck driver in Massachusetts. “We have a lot of weight and the distance that we cover with a full load to come to a full stop, can take a couple of football fields length.” Which is why you need to leave extra distance between your vehicle and others on the roads, to allow for safe braking. As of midnight Wednesday, cities and towns across western Massachusetts received anywhere from 3″-to-8” of snow.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 05:45:32 +0000
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