Short of installing a radar warning system in every vehicle, we don't see any good solutions to prevent the next multi-car pile-up on the Blatnik or Bong bridges between Duluth and Superior.
A 16-vehicle pile-up the morning of Jan. 27 sent seven people to the hospital and killed a newborn.
As usual when tragedy strikes, some people want to place blame. Why were people driving so fast under bad conditions? Why didn't the state patrol warn people?
The answer is that the conditions under which the accident occurred were highly unusual. Both ends of the bridge were sunny; people mistakenly assumed that anything encountered between the two ends would not be unusual. Then suddenly, they entered a whiteout.
We believe that people do drive too fast on the bridges even in the best of conditions. Those bridges are far above the ground and water, but many motorists forget that atmospheric conditions are different even just 100 feet up. A sudden gust of wind at that height can blow a car from one lane to another -- or drop a fog bank on one small portion.
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It's easy to say, "Be more careful," and we do say it, but we also recognize that accidents on the Bong and Blatnik don't happen often enough to make people heed such a powerful warning as the Jan. 27 accident.
