Cars sliding down a snowy Seattle hill: crashing steel Ice Capades

Here's a brief, excruciating video of cars losing traction on Seattle's Capitol Hill during this week's snowstorm and caroming downwards, out of control (the clincher is a city bus, and what appears to be the same white SUV that just keeps on trying to make it, as though the owner can't believe that his giant ride can't contend with puny black ice).

As someone who's been in a couple of high-speed, freeway ice-accidents (including a childhood trauma in which I was thrown from the car!) this was nearly too painful to watch — though, as the closing credits remind us, no one was actually hurt on Capitol Hill that day. Which, I suppose, makes this into a kind of crashing steel Ice Capades.

Sliding Cars in Seattle Snow on 11/22/10

(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)