Home » Blog » Auto Accidents » Beware of black ice while on the roads this winter

Beware of black ice while on the roads this winter

Posted January 19th, 2015 by Anthony Carbone, PC.

Beware of black ice while on the roads this winter

Posted January 19th, 2015 by Anthony Carbone, PC.

If you’ve been on the roads in the past 24 hours, you know how bad the roads are. Slick, black ice has caused hundreds of auto accidents through New York and New Jersey. According to news reports, the slippery roadways have led to nearly 700 crashes throughout the area since Sunday. Although warmer temperatures are making travel easier, it is wintertime and black ice won’t be going away any time soon.

For anyone who has learned to drive in the Northeast knows how dangerous black ice can be. Unlike snow, it is hard to determine whether it is present on the roadways. The roadway may just look slick, until you start feeling your vehicle slide. You must remember that whenever the roadway looks slick during this time of year, chances are black ice is present.

If you are driving on the road after a freezing rain has fallen, be aware that black ice is probably present. If you do hit a patch of black ice, keep these tips in mind:

Remain calm. You may want to panic but this can be the worst thing to do. Instead, try to keep the wheel straight.
Whatever you don’t even touch the brakes. This will cause you to skid. Instead, lift your foot off the accelerator, allowing the car to slow down.
If you have the ability, shift to a lower gear to gain more control over the car.
Try to find an area where there’s more traction, even if it’s a snow-covered area.
If you do start to skid, stay calm and slowly pump your brakes while steering the car in the direction of the skid.
If you go off the road, try to hit something that will cause a minimum amount of damage.

If you do get into a car accident and are injured, you’re going to need an experienced attorney. For more than 26 years, the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone has been handling car accident cases throughout New Jersey. Don’t delay, contact us today for a free consultation.

What Makes Black Ice So Dangerous Compared to Other Winter Hazards

Most drivers treat snow as the primary winter road threat, and that instinct is understandable. Snow is visible. It accumulates in ways that prompt caution before you even turn the ignition. Black ice is the opposite. It forms as a thin, nearly transparent layer that bonds to the pavement and blends in with the dark surface of the road. At highway speeds, a driver may have no warning at all before traction is completely gone.

The conditions that produce black ice are not hard to identify once you know what to look for. It forms most readily when temperatures hover around freezing and moisture is present, either from freezing rain, from melting snow that refreezes as temperatures drop at night, or from fog and mist that settles onto a cold road surface. Bridges and overpasses freeze before the surrounding road surface because air circulates beneath them, pulling heat away from both sides. Shaded stretches of highway, particularly those beneath overpasses or through wooded corridors, stay colder longer and collect black ice that has already melted in sunnier sections just a quarter mile back.

Early morning hours carry the highest risk. Overnight temperatures drop, residual moisture from the previous day freezes, and road crews may not yet have had time to treat every surface. The combination of low traffic volume and limited visibility in the pre-dawn hours means that a driver encountering black ice at highway speed may have no reference points to warn them of the hazard ahead.

New Jersey’s geography compounds the problem. The state’s heavy commuter traffic means that even during winter weather events, roads stay congested. A single vehicle that loses control on black ice can trigger a multi-car collision within seconds on a packed interstate, and the drivers behind it may have had no ability to see the hazard or react in time.

Why the Tips Above Work: The Physics Behind Losing and Regaining Control

The six tips listed above are not arbitrary. Each one addresses a specific aspect of how a vehicle behaves when traction disappears, and understanding why they work makes them easier to execute under pressure.

Keeping the wheel straight when you first hit black ice preserves whatever forward momentum the vehicle has. A sharp turn on a frictionless surface will not redirect the car. It will simply put the wheels at an angle and initiate a spin. The goal in that first moment is not to steer your way out but to avoid making the loss of control worse.

Lifting off the accelerator rather than braking is counterintuitive for many drivers. The reflex is to brake, but on black ice, braking applies force to wheels that have nothing to push against. The vehicle does not slow in a controlled manner. Instead, the wheels lock or the anti-lock braking system activates repeatedly, and the car continues forward with essentially no ability to steer. Deceleration through engine drag is far more gradual and keeps the wheels rolling rather than locked, which preserves some residual steering ability.

Shifting to a lower gear works by the same principle. The engine’s mechanical resistance to wheel spin provides a steady, gentle braking effect that does not shock the wheels the way applying the brake pedal does. Drivers of manual transmission vehicles have long used this technique on slippery roads, but many modern automatics also allow the driver to select a lower range.

Seeking snow-covered pavement over icy pavement is a legitimate technique because fresh snow provides friction. The granular texture of snow grips tires far better than a glassy ice surface does. Moving from ice to snow, even if it means leaving the travel lane, can restore enough control to bring the vehicle to a safe stop.

Steering into a skid addresses the physics of rear-wheel slip. When the rear of the vehicle slides to the right, the car begins to rotate counterclockwise. Steering left, in the direction of the skid, helps realign the vehicle’s heading with the direction of travel and can break the spin before it completes. The instinct to steer away from the skid typically accelerates the rotation.

Where Black Ice Accidents Happen Most Often in New Jersey

Knowing the common locations does not make black ice less dangerous, but it does allow drivers to adjust their behavior in high-risk zones before the hazard appears. In New Jersey, certain stretches of road create reliably worse black ice conditions year after year.

Routes that cross or parallel the Raritan River and other waterways see heavy fog accumulation that can produce ice even when surrounding areas remain clear. The elevated sections of the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway are bridge-like in structure and freeze faster than grade-level roadways. In Hudson County, the steep grades of streets running down from the Palisades toward Jersey City and the waterfront become particularly treacherous when freezing rain follows a brief warm spell.

Residential side streets in Bergen, Essex, and Union counties that receive less maintenance attention than major arteries often go untreated through the night, collecting ice from overnight temperature drops after a daytime thaw. Morning commuters leaving their neighborhoods are frequently the first to encounter those conditions.

Ramp connections on the interstate system deserve special attention. The curved geometry of a highway on-ramp combined with ice multiplies the risk substantially. A driver accelerating onto a ramp that looks dry may hit a frozen shadow zone mid-curve at a point where neither braking nor steering can recover the situation.

Liability and Fault When a Black Ice Accident Happens

The safety advice in the original post is critical, but anyone who has already been in a black ice accident has a different set of concerns. The legal question of who is responsible for a weather-related collision is more nuanced than it might appear, and understanding it matters to whether an injured person can recover compensation.

New Jersey follows a modified comparative negligence rule. An injured driver can recover damages as long as their own share of fault for the accident does not exceed 50 percent. Their recovery is reduced proportionally by their percentage of fault. What this means in a black ice case is that the speed a driver was traveling, their following distance, and whether they had received warnings about icy conditions all become part of the analysis.

A driver who was traveling at posted highway speed on a road with known ice warnings and following too closely when the collision occurred faces a credible comparative negligence argument from the defense. A driver who was traveling at a cautious reduced speed, maintaining proper following distance, and still lost control due to ice that formed after road treatment had been applied is in a meaningfully different legal position.

Other drivers can bear liability as well. A driver who panics and brakes hard on black ice, spinning into adjacent lanes and striking other vehicles, may carry significant fault for the resulting collisions even though the ice was the initial cause. A commercial truck driver who fails to reduce speed in known winter conditions, whose vehicle then jackknifes and blocks multiple lanes, presents a different set of liability questions involving both the driver and the trucking company.

Government entities responsible for road maintenance also carry potential liability under certain circumstances, though suing a public entity in New Jersey requires satisfying procedural requirements including filing a Notice of Claim within 90 days of the accident. Missing that deadline can forfeit the right to bring a claim against a municipality or the state entirely, regardless of the merits of the underlying case.

The Role of Vehicle Maintenance in Black Ice Accident Claims

Tire condition is a recurring issue in winter accident litigation. Tires with inadequate tread depth provide substantially less grip than properly maintained tires even on dry pavement. On black ice, the difference can be decisive. A driver whose tires were worn below the minimum legal tread depth of 2/32 of an inch may face a comparative fault argument even if they did nothing wrong behind the wheel. More practically, proper winter tires or all-season tires in good condition genuinely do provide more grip at low temperatures than summer tires because their rubber compounds remain more pliable in the cold.

Anti-lock braking systems function as designed in the scenario described in the tips above, but they have limits on black ice. They prevent wheel lock but cannot manufacture traction that the surface does not provide. Electronic stability control systems, which are standard on all passenger vehicles sold in the United States since 2012, similarly help manage traction loss but are not a substitute for appropriate speed and following distance. When a driver or opposing party makes claims about how a vehicle’s safety systems performed, those claims can be evaluated through vehicle data recorders, which many modern cars log automatically.

What to Do at the Scene of a Black Ice Accident

The moments after a weather-related collision involve risks beyond the immediate physical injuries. If a vehicle has come to rest in a live travel lane on a highway, remaining in or near that vehicle exposes everyone involved to a secondary collision from traffic that encounters the same ice and cannot stop. Whenever it is safe to do so, moving away from the travel lanes and toward the shoulder or median is the priority.

Calling 911 serves two purposes. It gets emergency services moving toward the scene and creates an official record of the accident that will become part of any subsequent insurance claim or legal proceeding. The police report from the scene documents road conditions, the position of the vehicles, any visible tire marks, and the officer’s initial assessment of causation. That report is not the final word on fault, but it is a document that every party to the claim will reference.

Photographing the scene before vehicles are moved captures information that disappears quickly in winter conditions. Tire tracks, impact marks, and the condition of the road surface are all relevant and can be treated or plowed over within hours. Witness contact information is worth collecting for the same reason: memories of what drivers observed in the moments before a collision are most accurate immediately afterward.

Seeking medical attention the same day matters both for health reasons and for the legal record. Cold temperatures and adrenaline can mask symptoms of soft tissue injury, concussion, or internal trauma that become apparent hours later. A gap between the accident and the first medical evaluation is something insurance adjusters use to question whether the injuries were actually caused by the collision.

Connecting with a New Jersey Auto Accidents Attorney early in the process allows the legal evaluation to begin while evidence is still available and before recorded statements are given to insurance companies that do not represent your interests.

Tags: Car Accidents