The Trip Toward Boston from Manassass, VA

April 26th -Traveling from Manassas, VA toward Boston was an experience. Before I explain, I just want everyone to know that I've made a promise to myself that I'll NEVER complain (too much) about the road conditions in Colorado. While they may certainly not be great at times, the road conditions from Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts certainly win the prize for being able to shake the living daylights out of someone driving their roads. (More to follow on what might happen.) I also noted a trend in driver's habit's. Many people drive well over the speed limit, and many have no concept of a safe following distance....as evidenced below. During the day, I got to observe the results of the driving habits....LOTS of accidents. Some were bad...like the one below. While one of the pictures shows one of the cars involved, it was not the car/truck most damaged. There appeared to be an estimated 10 cars and 1 semi-tractor involved...but the attempt to get some additional photos just didn't capture the damage. As a guess of what happened, I "think" the car pictured had to stop suddenly, and a semi then rear-ended him. Then, the chain-reaction started...probably because other cars couldn't stop in time for the wreckage. The first picture shows the impact on traffic lanes going North (while the accident was on the Southbound lanes). I unfortunately was involved in this bottleneck of traffic for about 4 miles.

This next picture shows one of the lesser damaged cars from the accident. This guy "may" have been the cause of the major accident behind him as I "think" he rear-ended someone, and others started piling into each other behind him when they couldn't stop.

This next picture shows the resulting traffic jam BEHIND the accident. There must have been 10 miles of stopped cars AND there were two more accidents where it appeared people couldn't stop and therefore caused another accident. Crazy....

This next picture is perhaps the freakiest picture I've ever taken. I was in extremely slow traffic and I noticed that traffic in the Southbound lanes were just starting to catch up to all the stopped traffic (from the accident). I heard tires squealing as other people were going too fast and had to stop fast to avoid hitting the stopping traffic...so I just grabbed my camera and started clicking pictures of the traffic. I actually caught two cars a split second befor they crashed. The lighter colored SUV was almost stopped when the dark car slammed on its brakes to "try" and stop. He didn't stop in time. If you look at the driver of the 2nd car, you'll see his head is forward as he is sliding JUST a split second before he crashes into the SUV. I was hoping I'd be able to get an after picture but I didn't want to cause any accident on our side of traffic by suddenly slowing down. I hope they were OK, but it sure didn't sound good as it happened.

After the stop and go traffic for other accidents, I decided it was time to stop...so I spent the night at the Submarine Base in Groton, CT. I was hoping to go to the Submarine museum but it was closed on Tuesdays, so I finished driving to Boston on Tuesday.