Thick fog that blanketed Chattanooga on Friday morning brought a chilling reminder of a catastrophe almost 21 years earlier in our area.
On Dec. 11, 1990, fog on Interstate 75 near Calhoun, Tenn., led to a 99-vehicle pileup that claimed 12 lives and caused scores of injuries. No fog-related wreck in Tennessee had ever caused as many deaths.
Happily, there was no disaster of similar scale when the fog rolled in yesterday, though one person was tragically reported killed in a fog-related, 50-car pileup near Nashville a day earlier. A driver apparently set off the chain-reaction crash when he struck traffic that had stopped.
We can't control the weather, but we can control the way we drive. Foggy weather -- like rain, snow or ice -- calls for all drivers to slow down and pay attention. Caution can head off tragedy.