My worst was driving from Blacksburg to Richmond after a very bad snow and ice storm. I lived on campus at Virginia Tech which lost power. The commodes would not flush, so dorms quickly stunk bad. I decided to get out of town. It was about 5 hours of driving on snow and ice. Most of the interstates had only one lane open, and were not cleared yet.
I lived in North Carolina for a few years, they had about 1/8 of an inch accumulation and traffic was at a stand still. It took people 8 hours to commute home when it normally took 1 hour.
We had a thriller driving back to Richmond (driving South on I-95)from South Riding (Dulles Airport-DC Area). It looked like it might storm when we left Richmond to go up there to visit our Son(which we don't do very often, sad to say), but we went ahead and visited with him until the afternoon. It started spitting snow as we left him and we thought we were ahead of the storm, but when we got to I-95 (we had driven the Fairfax County Parkway from US-50 [Chantilly Area}over to I-95) we encountered the usual heavy traffic proceeding South. Everyone was proceeding slowly (35 mph range) and we started seeing cars down in the median area or over the embankment to the right or against the guardrail. I was in the inside lane proceeding at what I thought was a steady, controlled speed, when all of a sudden my traction broke free and I was sliding toward the inside guardrail with no controll of the vehicle (I was driving my 2002 Ford Ranger-Edge Model). Luckily, I guess, we were'nt sliding that fast, because when we reached the small roll of snow, that the snowplow had made, we spun around and were sliding toward the outside guardrail, the vehicle heading in the other direction, we had made a 180 in the middle of the road. And, very luckily (God always takes care of me), we didn't hit anyone as there were no vehicles close to us. The traffic did stop and allow me to turn the vehicle around and proceed again.......black ice..... The traffic was then only traveling bumper-to-bumper with hesitations in between and we reached the Richmond Area a few hours later. I definitely stayed in line and proceeded with the other traffic. When I broke free and started to slide, I told my wife to hang on as "here we go".
My worst traffic experience was several years ago after Thanksgiving break. This was on the way to Virginia Tech from NoVA. We left late on purpose to try and avoid the traffic, but everyone else seemed to have the same idea and we had a parking lot on 66 W before we hit 81 S. I remember it took about 2 hours to move 2 miles. Just a heads up for anyone driving there this Thanksgiving!
I was traveling back from a remote site in Silver Spring back home 63 miles each way. We could not get out early. I left at 5 was home at 11 after helping 3 people get un stuck and watching a jeep 360 down the high way at over 60 mph.
it was the more scary misrible experiance in a long time.
A few years ago, when the entire Springfeild interchange (I-95,I-495,I-395, HOV lanes and every ramp) were all shut down for the entire morning while they unloaded an overturned tractor-trailer loaded with something like 20,000 pounds of blackpowder by hand. I drove passed at 5AM. I think I might have been the last car coming from Maryland that made it throught the interchange headed to Richmond for a meeting. On the way home at 2PM it was still gridlocked from Quantico all the way up to DC.
I try to avoid NoVA when ever possible, they have the most incourtious and impatient drivers anywhere. They swerve throughh lanes of traffic to get 1 or two cars ahead, and rarely let you in at a merge.
I live and work near Tyson's corner. Takes me 45 minutes to go 6 miles each work day. Unbelievable how many people are on the road around here. When it rains, you can bet it's going to take 1 1/2 hours to go the same distance.
Northern Va. 2nd worst in the country. That wont do we will have to try harder and be number one. My worst traffic experience is normal rush hour morning or evening. Hear me out. I am a shift worker in Law enforcement so I normally go to and from work in non peak hours so on my days off when I have to run an errand during normal traffic time it is just unusual for me and drives me nuts.
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