Editorial: Some drivers are drips in wet weather

When the rain began to fall on Tuesday afternoon and right through Wednesday I daresay those who work the fields of the region were smiling. It had been a long dry spell and the fields were showing the effects.

The fire service crews would also have been whispering a "thankyou" to Mother Nature as the rain took the heat off the threat of grass fires, which had become a fairly regular event.

But the road policing teams would not have been smiling. Instead, they would have been anticipating.

Anticipating a busy couple of days because they knew from past experience that there are drivers out there who are oblivious to the wet.

They don't see any difference between a wet road and a dry one. The reduction in visibility is simply one of those things.

They won't set out on their travels slightly earlier to take the damp landscape of roads into account. It's just another road, it seems.

Until the vehicle in front is forced to make a quicker than anticipated stop and it comes time to quickly weigh up what's going on, what's required, and then react.

As a senior traffic policing officer told me this week as the rains fell, too many people had not factored the unusual arrival of wet stuff from the sky into their normal dry behavioural patterns on the road.

There were nose-to-tail "fender benders" happening left, right and centre. Nothing major and no serious injury, but a lot of people would have been left with a lot of inconvenience and in some cases the loss of the car for repairs for several days.

"And that's just the ones we are called to - there were probably others we didn't hear about," the officer said.

If there was any bright angle to it all it would have to be that those unable to stop in time and who rammed the vehicle in front were unlikely to make the same mistake again. Not when an immediate $150 infringement notice is issued.

During a road voyage to Hastings yesterday the light rains dampened the roads and I saw it for myself. The gaps between vehicles did not expand, and people just drove on as if all was fine and dandy, and dry.

I stayed back ... then the guy behind me decided to overtake and went on to tail-gate the bloke in front.

Sigh.