Over the course of three hours on Wednesday morning, 14 accidents occurred, involving 28 vehicles and leaving 16 people injured. Could these incidents have been avoided if a weather alarm had been in place? A spokesperson for Meteolux believes this may have been the case, though not without debate.
They pointed towards the warning paradox, stating that “if a warning leads to effective preventive measures, the absence of impacts can later give the impression that the warning was unnecessary. Had a warning been issued and roads treated accordingly, the resulting impacts might have been minimal or even avoided altogether”.
The reason as to why no warning was issued was due to the fact that there was neither active snowfall, nor freezing rain. Meteolux elaborated on yesterday’s conditions, which caused the roads to be as slippery as they were.
“During the night, skies cleared across much of the country, while fog developed in the northwestern part of Luxembourg, where temperatures remained above freezing. Following yesterday’s rainfall, road surfaces remained damp. After around 3am, ground temperatures dropped below 0 °C, allowing this residual moisture to freeze and form black ice on untreated roads.”
Meteolux have conducted an internal review of this morning’s conditions and concluded that an expansion of the current warning system may be necessary. That could potentially encompass certain road phenomena besides snowfall and freezing rain.
Correction: In an earlier version, we reported 28 accidents; this has been corrected to 14 accidents involving 28 vehicles. The article has since been amended.
