The I-95 Traffic Jam

[Tishabet]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

Does anyone know the consumption of a gas powered car at idle with headlights and heater on ?

Apparently a Ford Explorer with a full tank can idle for 33 hours before you run out of gas. That's without headlights or fan.

If you had a fully charged Tesla, it uses 10% of your battery for 8 hours of heat in "normal conditions" (no info on what that really means) or 14-15% for 8 hours in "extreme cold" and it automatically halts the camp mode if you drop to 15% battery. So on a full charge in "extreme cold" conditions your Tesla would keep you warm for a little over 45 hours and would still have 15% battery to get you off the road safely.

[Chocaholic]

Guessing plenty of those vehicles were not full fuel/charge as they entered the on-ramp.

Left Michigan 32 years ago...and never looked back.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

The problem in NoVa is two-fold: No one knows how to drive in snow, everyone thinks they know how to drive in snow.

It is bumper cars at times. I have never seen anything like it.

When I was commuting into DC, I always carried a winter kit in the car: Food, water. clothes, tow straps, etc...and I gassed up every day.

DC has more traffic pinch points imaginable.

When I was in HS, we lived in Woodbridge, VA, and dad worked up in/very near DC. I remember one day where there was a bunch of snow and he took my car into DC. It was a '65 Impala with a 4spd and marginally effective drum brakes. It also had mismatched tires front to rear. No idea what they were, but they were probably cheap tires that the PO had on it. I remember him coming home from work. The roads to where we lived hadn't been plowed yet. THere was probably 6-8" of snow on them. He came chugging on into the neighborhood with the car looking kind of like a snow plow with about a foot of snow piled up against the front bumper.

I drove in the snow a few times when we lived there, but was just a kid and never had to commute in it.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by asphaltgambler

Northern VA, 10 mins from everywhere but takes you 40 because of traffic....

Houston is like that too.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by vash

that looks like absolute hell.

it happened here, but under ideal weather conditions. my friends construction project resulted in an excavator backing into one of those high voltage transmission towers, which collapsed the structure draping the high KV wires across HWY 101. i think i remember 15 hours lockdown, stuck in traffic.

the neighborhood restuarants rallied and sent coffee, food, anything to the stuck motorist. it was super humanity in action. people would walk to the bathrooms nearby. nobody freaked, nobody died.

but in frozen weather..suckage!!

After hurricane Katrina hit NO, Rita came through and "they" were saying that it was going to be a direct hit on Houston causing massive damage. There was a huge evacuation of everything from Houston to Galveston. We went to my parents (kind of a weird choice since they lived in the FL panhandle). What normally took us 8-9 hours with the family took 16-17 hours, and the first 8hrs of that was the first 30-35 miles to get out of Houston and on to I-10 East. It's my understanding that there were people that evacuated with dogs in the back of pick up trucks where the dogs died (presumably from dehydration and from the heat). I know that the evacuation from Houston to Dallas took something like 20-24 hours for what is normally a 4-5 hour drive.

And we used a ton of gas during that 8 hours to go 30-35 miles.