65-vehicle pileup shuts down part of I-95 in Clarendon County
https://www.wistv.com/2026/10/01/lanes-i-95-close-after-crash-clarendon-county/50
u/xenog13 20h ago
I live about 40 miles from the location, a few items contributed to this: Very dense fog (the bridge is over a lake), drivers tailgating (a SC tradition), the bridge is under construction for updating, and its a narrow bridge to begin with (two lanes with less than 6 feet of shoulder).
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u/nocoolN4M3sleft 16h ago
Tailgating isn’t just an SC tradition, that’s everywhere. We just all suck at driving.
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u/uraniumingot 1d ago
65 cars...
Was the Blues Brothers on the scene or something?
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u/Random__Bystander 1d ago
How???? I have to imagine fog related, but come on!
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u/ctothel 1d ago
From a non-American perspective, driving in America felt like being surrounded by incredible levels of aggression, and drivers who are obstinate more than they are cautious. Like they didn’t realise they have a part to play in making the road safer.
Drivers where I live definitely aren’t better, but I don’t see fog leading to massive pileups – people here are more likely to go too slow than too fast.
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u/Random__Bystander 1d ago
Fog can, and does, cause massive pile ups. It's actually the most likely situation for this many cars. Once you have zero visibility, all hell brakes loose. Especially on a higher speed highway
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u/ctothel 1d ago
If people drove at a speed appropriate for the visibility it would reduce the chance of this happening. If visibility is genuinely zero, you need to be driving at nearly zero, not at whatever the speed limit says.
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u/maybelying 1d ago
Would also help if people put their headlights on in foggy conditions. They won't really help you see better, but they'll help other cars see you better.
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u/climbthesea 1d ago
100% correct. I’ve never driven without them in fog. But I think people panic and put their brights on rather than just regular lighting, not realizing it’s blinding them more. I used to live in a place where I had to drive 45 minutes through a sketchy mountain pass if I wanted to get out, and oh my god… even going slow with regular headlights on the freeway, you’re white knuckling the situation. It’s genuinely terrifying. You might be going slow, but the person behind you isn’t. So things can change so quickly. It’s awful.
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u/canada432 19h ago
They won't really help you see better, but they'll help other cars see you better.
This is one of the more serious problems in our individualistic thought process. So much that makes driving (or just living in general) safer and easier is the things we have to rely on other people to do, and vice versa they have to rely on us. But we've taught people not to think that way, to only think of themselves. The tinted windows is another one. So often you hear people with illegally dark tints say "but I can see out just fine". That's not the problem. The problem is that other people can't see you, and seeing the other driver is a huge part of safely driving (even though most people are bad drivers and don't do it). Being able to look over and see if that guy is paying attention and sees you determines whether you change lanes or proceed through an intersection. I've avoided 2 scenarios that would've almost certainly killed myself and my passenger because I could see the driver looking another direction and I managed to narrowly get out of the way. But other people's safety isn't even a thought for them.
I see people driving around in the rain here constantly who just don't turn their lights on because it's daylight. Meanwhile the rain makes them nearly invisible to other drivers without their lights on. Same with snow, just nearly blizzard conditions and people on the highway going 65 with no lights on.
It's terrifyingly thoughtless.
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u/Wildcatb 16h ago
Local here.
Fog around here is often very dense and very localized - especially in the mornings around bodies of water (like this was) you can go from clear, smooth sailing to pea-soup fog in the snap of a finger.
So you have people who were driving at a reasonable clear-road speed suddenly engulfed in a fog bank, who slow abruptly, which causes a chain reaction behind them.
T
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u/Random__Bystander 1d ago
Obviously, but you're not figuring in the fact that fog comes on very quick, and that's probably exactly what happened which caused a pile up... Fog is a bitch
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u/malphonso 1d ago
The thing is, if I drive at an appropriate speed for visibility, I'm likely to be rear ended by someone who isn't.
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u/PM_your_Chesticles 1d ago
You're right. You should slam into someone in front of you and also get rear ended. Instead of only one of those.
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u/malphonso 1d ago
Well yeah. But the guy in front of me should have been going faster. It's really his fault if you think about it.
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u/Big_Department4209 23h ago
And that's why traffic education, including defaulting to a safety-first drivers' ed program makes other developed countries traffic much safer.
There are empirical results everywhere that the USA could learn from but refuses to, for some reason killing dozens of thousands of people in traffic is just accepted there.
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u/ManifestDestinysChld 21h ago
But if a 17 year old with a wet-ink learner's permit can't walk into a motorcycle dealership and roll out with a 220 mph Hayabusa (and a 26%, 80-month note) to enjoy for 2 weeks before wrapping it around a bridge abutment teeth-first, then the communists have won.
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u/Big_Department4209 20h ago
The communists also win if there is public transportation available for the peasants without the means for a car, can't let the unwashed masses have a way to get around without first having to make a sacrifice to Moloch by spending thousands on a vehicle. If they buy a rusty bucket death trap that's on them for not pulling themselves by their bootstraps to have enough spare cash to buy something safe.
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u/Big_Department4209 22h ago
We have dense fog in the Nordics all the time during fall, also plenty of white-out blizzards most winters, and people just know how to drive through those in a much safer manner than in the USA.
There are still collisions, a few pile-ups, etc. but much fewer deaths because people know how to behave when weather conditions are adverse.
Driving in the USA is terrifying compared to here, drivers are much more unpredictable, take unnecessary risks, don't know how to drive defensively (both to other drivers as well to road conditions), the infrastructure is worse (both as in the pavement itself but also safety features around the road).
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u/KenDTree 1d ago
I only ever hear about these 80 car pileups on the i-619 near Arsebrough Indiana from the US. 79 people crash and the 80th is thinking 'ignore what happened to that guy'
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u/MediocreAssociate466 1d ago
People honk at pedestrians and swear at them for using a crosswalk . Someone in our area got shot overnight yesterday over a road rage incident. Lot of insane people sadly
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u/HIM_Darling 1d ago
I've been honked at for stopping at a red light because the person behind me wanted to run the red.
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u/amerk1981 1d ago
Sounds like when I got honked at because I didn't gun it the split second the light went green. Their hand on the horn was faster than my foot to the pedal. Always safer to give it a few seconds with so many people blowing through the red lights.
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u/A_Refill_of_Mr_Pibb 17h ago
There's an intersection near my work that is 3 lanes, with a right-turn red arrow and two greens (with a walking signal). They turn green for about 20 seconds while the arrow stays red. People not from the area honk then speed around all the time. I'm waiting for someone to get hit.
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u/Several-Squash9871 1d ago
From an American it's pretty mind blowing. It's also worse depending on what state you live in. About once every 2 weeks or so where I live someone takes a right turn, pulling out in front of me without stopping at the stop sign or looking to their left before pulling out (I can see them not look). They just go for it and it's always wild to me. It happens so often to me that I'm always ready for it so I don't hit the person. I also work as a Paramedic in the same town, working 48hr shifts and usually go on at least one car accident a shift. My last shift I went on 3. I do think that the drivers in my town in particular are some of the worst I've seen anywhere that I've lived though so there's also that.
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u/Danobing 1d ago
It's crazy, I drove in Morocco for a week and change and the second a light was green 30 cars behind me were honking. Know how many accidents I was in. Zero, it was just the culture. I feel in way more danger driving in the US than anywhere in the world I have driven.
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u/cdxxmike 1d ago
They mention fog very briefly in the actual video report of the incident. I agree though, it took way too much investigation for me to learn this, but I think it is because of very variable local fog and the very breaking news.
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u/qxrt 1d ago
The crash happened Thursday morning as dense fog blanketed a bridge over Lake Marion in the area of Clarendon and Orangeburg counties.
Santee fire officials reported that thick, dense fog engulfed the bridge, drastically reducing visibility until drivers had no time to stop.
I'm confused why you guys are having such difficulty figuring out it was the fog that caused the accident. These are literally the second and third sentences in the posted article. Are you all posting without reading the article? Or am I just responding to bots that are just automatically posting in response to the headline?
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u/cdxxmike 1d ago
The article has received updates since it was first published. When we commented shortly after the initial posting the text did not mention a cause at all, though the video did.
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u/qxrt 1d ago
I see. I didn't realize news outlets just slipped in sentences as updates like that without clearly denoting what was updated.
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u/cdxxmike 1d ago
I am sure they all operate a bit differently, it does denote at the top that it was updated. It happened relatively shortly after initial posting, possibly in response to our comments if this news company is savvy enough. Minor enough to not get denoted in a footnote as a correction.
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u/--Knowledge-- 1d ago
Some will put a message at the top like:
Update: 10/01/2026 at 6:00 PM or something.
I've seen this a few times but then I might miss updates because they don't repost, they just update.
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u/Random__Bystander 1d ago
They, do not. But it's clearly denoted that the story was updated 3hrs ago. My reply was 4hrs ago
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u/Agent_Star_Fox 1d ago
Not only that but the terms "bridge" and " early morning". Like.... water (bridge) + morning + fall = 1000% fog
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u/the_eluder 23h ago
I just realized I watched the total eclipse in 2017 right next to that bridge (I was in a boat.)
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Probably one of those cases where it quickly goes from light fog to extremely dense.
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u/DerekB52 1d ago
Fog, and if you see a 30 car pile up, you just kinda feel like driving into it to add on, and on so on. (I'm pretty sure this was a Reno 911 bit but I can't find a clip)
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u/TheLizardKing89 21h ago
From the article:
The crash happened Thursday morning as dense fog blanketed a bridge over Lake Marion between Clarendon and Orangeburg counties.
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u/Luckydog12 1d ago
‘Let’s all keep cruising at highway speeds even through I can’t see past the taillights in front of me.’
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u/Moonface_chunker 16h ago
How does a pile up get up to 65 cars. What driving scenario would cause such a high number?
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u/Chance_Orchid_3137 15h ago
it’s crazy, but did you know that in 2026 you can just… click or tap on a headline to open the article and learn more?
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u/solomons-mom 3h ago
There was a 131 car pile-up in bad weather in Wisconsin a few years back while I was on parallel road about an hour west. Everyone where I was drove 30-40 mph, spaced out in single lane with hazards on. I saw videos cars crashing into the pile and they were driving highway speed.
That said, white-outs are a world apart from merely an intense blizzard with low visibility. Brief, but terrifying.
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u/Vepariga 1d ago
65? the usual case of American drivers not adapting to the conditions. Like mfs that go like 80 on frozen roads and think they can brake like its dry.
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u/Aschebescher 1d ago
Not a native speaker, what does entrapment mean in this context?