what is black ice, and just how prevalent is it?
Does it really cause all the accidents attributed to it? — Larry Barden, Oakland, CA Save your skepticism for do-it-yourself cryonics or Jerry Brown’s newest plan to revitalize Oakland. If you lived in Maine instead of California, you’d know that black ice is very real. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t. Half the people around here drive as if it’s a myth. Black ice, also called glare ice or clear ice, is a thin layer of ice on the roadway. Any ice is dangerous to drive on because it’s so slippery (more later on why), but black ice is especially insidious because a road covered with it looks merely wet, not icy. Black ice isn’t really black, of course, but it’s so thin and transparent that the dark color of the pavement shows through. And it really is dangerous to drive on. Statistics from Sweden show that the automobile accident rate there is five times higher on roads covered with black ice than on dry pavement, four times higher than on wet pavement, and twice as high as on pavement co
