http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/22/us/texas-highway-pileup/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- At least two people were killed and as many as 120 injured in Thanksgiving pileups involving an estimated 100 cars on a foggy stretch of highway in southeast Texas, authorities said.
The first accident -- a multi-car wreck in the eastbound lands of Interstate 10 -- occurred about 8:45 a.m., according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Chain-reaction crashes followed, the department said in a news release, and included several accidents in the westbound lanes of the intersate, southwest of Beaumont in Jefferson County.
"Initial reports at the time of the crash indicated there was dense fog, which could be a contributing factor to those crashes," Texas Highway Patrol Trooper Stephanie Davis said.
The two fatalities occurred in the same vehicle, authorities said, and the victims were a male and a female. Authorities did not release identities pending notification of the victims' families.
The two were killed when their vehicle was hit from behind by an 18-wheeler, the Department of Public Safety said.
Video from CNN affiliate KBMT showed badly mangled vehicles atop one another and people who appeared to be injured stretched out in grass alongside the highway and on ambulance gurneys. Long lines of cars, each battered and some appearing to be totaled, lined the roadway. The vehicles included cars, minivans, pickups, tractor-trailer trucks and at least one FedEx truck.

No details were known about the fatalities or exactly how many injuries resulted from the accidents, officials said.

The role of fog and the causes of the accidents were still under investigation Thursday.
In several pictures, there appeared to be a slight sheen of fog.
It was not known exactly how many injuries resulted from the accidents, said Davis.
Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff Rod Carroll said that at least 80 and as many as 120 injured people were taken from the scene. The most seriously injured were being transported to Houston, about 75 miles away.
Several victims were transported to neighboring hospitals in Beaumont and Port Arthur.
The role of fog and the causes of the accidents were still under investigation, Davis said.
Westbound lanes of the interstate were closed for nearly four hours before being reopened. The eastbound lanes of I-10 in that area were to remain closed for the eight to 10 hours, authorities said Thursday afternoon.
"We are still estimating at least eight hours to open the interstate because we have so much debris on the road that we have to clear," Davis said at midafternoon.

 

No good news here.  Sorry to hear it.  Fog is a killer on the highway.  How people
can dare to keep moving fast is beyond me.  When the fog gets heavy, it's not even
safe to go slowly because someone can rear-end you when they're going too fast
to notice you're going slower.

And your own mother's story is hard to hear, as well.  My sympathy, Matthew.  

This national news item hit pretty close to home for me.
250 miles close, to be exact.

It's a shame that so many people have to travel to be with family on a feast like Thanksgiving. It's a shame our modern system requires families to split up all over the country, just to find work so they can keep body & soul together.

If I didn't leave my hometown 8 years ago to live near my wife's family (and move closer to Computer Programming work), I'd be moving now. My hometown in the Midwest is unfortunately becoming another Detroit. That is, high unemployment and crime, low safety level, crashing house prices, etc.

My mother still lives there -- for now. She is a couple months from eviction, and I don't think she has many options besides living with me. Her house -- purchased in 1994 for $82,900 -- is now worth only $55,000. There are THAT many foreclosures in her neighborhood. So basically her house isn't even worth the price of materials & labor to rebuild it! Absolutely unbelievable. I never thought I'd see the day.

Since my family is *so* far away, I don't travel up there much. The last time I visited was 2007.

Well if Texas ever does actually secede, half the country might emigrate there, you wouldn't be alone down  there for too long.

And I really do believe that is a possibility someday.

When (not if) the Marxists handlers of Obama really do finish off the country in the next four years, the Balkinization of the U.S. will begin to take root. I perceive  little pockets of the country forming with like-minded people to start smaller nation-states and you will see families start coming back together for security and survival reasons as everything starts falling down around them.

As for the OP, too bad, I seen that wreck on the news, I understand the fog was really heavy that morning and visibility was almost nil, yet still people probably didn't want to slow down. I live in NY and when we get some Nor'Easters up here with a foot of snow or more and a lot of these idiots with there SUV's and All wheel drives still think they can do the max speed but learn in a hurry that kind of tech doesn't work on ice and frozen snow. People are either gulliable, stupid or just plain don't care about themselves and anybody around them.