A DIY public safety announcement

Just the other day, as I was getting in my car in the parking lot, I wiped out on ice that was hidden in a very shallow puddle. Needless to say, not only did I end up bruising myself but I was also left with wet marks on the bottoms of my pants.

Not fun.

It did get me wondering the rest of the day though: How did this happen? I was otherwise fine when I was standing in that puddle next to my car door and opening it. It wasn’t until the very moment that I went to get into the car that I suddenly went sliding and landed practically under the car door. After madly trying to regain ground, I looked down closely and realized there was a huge layer of black ice sitting right below the glistening surface of the puddle.

After thinking back and carefully reflecting on the sequence of events that led to my fall — how nothing indicated to me that the black ice was even there until it was too late — I saw that a number of influences factored into this accident, so I set out to make this PSA to post in the elevator to warn other residents in my building.