{please excuse me while I dig the sand out of my teeth}

Whew!  This evening coming home from a seller appointment in Gilbert I found myself stuck on the San Tan 202 Freeway waiting out a nasty dust storm.  As a native to sunny AZ I always grew up calling them”¦well”¦dust storms.  The last couple years have provided the ever fun term haboob {snicker, snort} and today I heard “stormpede.”  Whatever you want to call them, I decided that today was a good day to remind everyone of the seriousness of these storms and best practices for dealing with them should you find yourself on the freeway with no visibility as I did today.  I don’t know if it’s really accurate or not but it seems that the last couple years have offered more dust storms than I remember being normal and we’ve had several traffic related deaths due to the lack of visibility.  Here’s AZ Department of Transportation’s recommended safety procedures in a dust storm:

• Avoid driving into or through a dust storm.
• Do not wait until poor visibility makes it difficult to safely pull off the roadway — do it as soon as possible. Completely exit the highway if you can.
• If you encounter a dust storm, check traffic immediately around your vehicle (front, back and to the side) and begin slowing down.
• Do not stop in a travel lane or in the emergency lane; look for a safe place to pull completely off the paved portion of the roadway.
• Stop the vehicle in a position ensuring it is a safe distance from the main roadway and away from where other vehicles may travel.
• Turn off all vehicle lights, including your emergency flashers.
• Set your emergency brake and take your foot off the brake.
• Stay in the vehicle with your seatbelts buckled and wait for the storm to pass.
• Drivers of high-profile vehicles should be especially aware of changing weather conditions and travel at reduced speeds.
• A driver’s alertness and safe driving ability is still the number one factor to prevent crashes and road rage accidents.
• When returning to the pavement, be aware that the road may be slippery and in some cases, pavement markings may be obscured by sand and dust blown on the road. Rain frequently accompanies dust storms and will cause slippery conditions.

Did you catch some of that?  Based on what I saw today many people don’t understand these recommendations and some of it is the opposite of what you’d expect.

Here’s the key to remember:  if your exterior lights are on, other drivers will use the taillights of the person in front of them as a guide to help navigate the road ahead of them. If you are pulled off the road and are sitting there with your lights on someone might think they can follow you and run right off the road or even collide with you! Turning your headlights off while stationed off the road, will reduce the possibility of a rear-end collision. If you get involved in a car accident and suffered an injury, you can try this out.

**Note** While writing this I found that ADOT has launched an aggressive monsoon safety awareness campaign.  You can watch their public safety video Pull Aside, Stay Alive and you can even vote for your favorite #HaboobHaiku on ADOT’s blog through tomorrow.

{another recommendation from my husband:  don’t put the recycle can out during a storm unless your wife *enjoys* chasing it all down the street in the dust}

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