Lesson told when car careens off mountain road

Late Saturday afternoon, as we were driving a two-lane mountain highway, Highway 89 north of Tahoe, a small pickup truck sailed off the road to its right.

It careened down a short slope, hit the ground nose first, and then flipped around in a 180 degree spin. It came to rest pointed back up at the roadway.

In less than a minute, a California Highway Patrol officer was on site. The driver, then out of his vehicle, appeared unharmed and more confused than anything. I read his mouth saying, “I don’t know what happened.”

The CHP gets this story a lot, it turns out, when city drivers venture to mountain highways and take their habits with them: driving fast, looking at their cell phones to text or punch in a number, pushing buttons on their radios and GPS devices.

That was the assessment of Lt. Kyle Foster, who runs a mountain division of the CHP.

“It used to be that drunk drivers were our biggest concerns,” Foster said. “We’re finding just as many problems with people on their phones, not paying attention.”

In some rural areas, Caltrans has engineered indented pavement in the center and sides of roadways that can shake up a driver, who from inattention, allows his or her vehicle to drift.

Basic math shows why so many drivers on summer vacation in the mountains can find themselves in trouble.

A car at 50 mph is traveling 73.3 feet per second. In four seconds, that’s about 100 yards. That means that at that speed, two drivers who are both looking at their phones, starting from the distance of the two goal lines on a football field, have only two seconds to look up and recognize oncoming traffic before they converge.

In emergencies, CHP studies show it takes many drivers almost three seconds to recognize the danger. Then, at 50 mph, it then takes about 175 feet to stop.

If things start to go sideways, these numbers mean you have only a second or two to get your act together. That’s how a driver on vacation can run off a mountain highway and then have no idea what happened.

“The distracted driver, the driver looking at their phone, these are the ones we are watching for,” Foster said.