How To Drive In The Snow, In A Regular-Ass Car, Without Freaking Out
Which brings me to the first thing you need to know in order to drive the hell home in the snow: You are not actually required to lose your goddamn mind just because snow is falling. It is not the apocalypse. Neither physics nor society have been cancelled by it. It is not sulfuric ash. There are no abominable snowpeople stalking through it. It will not dissolve your body if it touches you. It is frozen water. You can drive in it, you can walk in it, you can stand in it long enough to help a fellow motorist get the fuck out of your way, you can ball it up and throw it at people who treat it like it’s the end of the goddamn world. It is snow.
From: How To Drive In The Snow, In A Regular-Ass Car, Without Freaking Out
{via Maribou}
It doesn’t snow much here in dreary old England, but last Saturday, after an evening in London with my wife and her friends, I drove back to Coventry at around 10:30pm and it started snowing around 11. It was the first snowfall I remember seeing and I happened to be driving through it on an unlit highway. Its a bit surreal.Report
Having grown up where I did, it’s practically magical.Report
Yes, this, especially in the Puget Sound.Report
Driving in snow requires experience. It also helps to have proper tires, properly salted roads, etc.
Sadly, if it doesn’t snow much in a given place, drivers generally lack all of that.
People living the desert are also, strangely, horrible at driving on wet and flooded roads.Report
As the article says, it’s really not the snow, it’s the drivers.
The SUV drivers who think that 4 wheel drive means extra traction on ice or packed snow and that allows them to go 65 on the highway, or that it allows better turning so you can make that sharp turn at 35 like you normally do and you won’t end up in the median wedged into the tree.
The dumb asses that break going up a hill or down it.
The ones that drive 10 miles an hour with their hazards lights on when the road has been salted and plowed but do it because everyone should slow down.Report
One of the best things about snow is that you can fall really really badly into it – like at a speed, orientation, and trajectory that would normally snap you in half – and be totally, totally fine, and not even more than mildly shaken up.Report
Yeah, I take a spill or two off my bike every winter, and seldom even get a visible scratched spot on my clothes. I do wear a helmet in winter though.Report