The car passed me going _way_ too fast for dry conditions, i.e. about the normal median speed on the LIE.
Conditions were not dry; there was an inch of snow on the ground, tire-compressed snow on the road, a layer of ice on top of that, and freezing rain to top it off. i.e., a normal miserable Long Island winter day.
The guy just sort of lost it, overcorrected a couple times, and the ever increasing yaw became a horizontal spin.
... which might have been survivable on a straight and level road.
... which the LIE is not.
This all happened at the entry to a downhill, off-camber bend to the right, so the guy slid straight into the guardrail at considerable velocity toward the guardrail and more considerable velocity along the guardrail. It may have been a Thrie rail, or it may have been a double Armco rail. No matter; the rail deflected in, a little, then launched the car back uphill, toward the inside of the curve, where the snow was not deep enough to stop it, but the offcamber gradient was, and the car slid back to impact the left barrier again, having pirouetted through almost exactly 360 degrees since the first impact.
... and the sequence repeated until the guardrail, still basically uninjured, had transferred all of the car's original kinetic energy into deformation of the front of the car.
It looked fine from the B-pillar back, still facing the guardrail as my car, now considerably slowed from its original crawl, slowly crept by.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA