[speeder]

I'm fully aware that it was icy. Believe it or not, the roads get icy in the great frozen north as well.

I've driven a lot on slippery roads, including driving taxi all winter in college and for a year in the '90s. There were times when it was so slippery with black ice that people would fall instantly when they stepped out of the car. Those conditions truly suck. Maybe Atlanta was completely covered in wet ice...IDK. It just looked like run of the mill snow and ice in the film I saw.

I have lots of gnarly winter driving stories but here is the best/worst one: I'm driving a taxi in college in Mpls., winter of '81/'82. I work nights. I get a call to pick someone up @ Hennepin Co. Medical Center, main hospital downtown. It's late, maybe around midnight.

My taxi was a Ford Fairmont sedan, an $8.00 car that you could kick to death wearing tennis shoes. Two strong guys could tip it over in the long direction.

Anyhow...I arrive at the hospital and the passengers are a young couple from Mexico or Central America who hablared zero English and their newborn baby. They were bringing their baby home. They somehow gave me their address, maybe wrote it down. I can't remember.

We left the hospital and headed for 35W south, the entrance is on the south edge of DT. It was a brutally cold night, probably 15 below zero F. There was almost no traffic. I accelerated down the long entrance ramp at a normal speed and entered the freeway. It seems to me that I was moving across the lanes towards the left lane when I hit black ice and we spun 720 degrees @ 60 mph. There was absolutely nothing to do but enjoy the ride. Thankfully to god, there was no other traffic and we did not bounce off the guardrail.

When we stopped spinning, I turned towards them in the back seat and apologized profusely but I could have been telling them I did it on purpose for all they understood me.

The young father just nodded and I got the car pointed south and continued to their destination without anymore drama. They're probably still telling that story 33 years later.

Black ice is no joke.