NPF: HOW TO DRIVE IN SNOW

Posted on | by Ed

Look, I know a number of things to be true:

1. Southerners generally cannot drive for shit even in the most pristine road and weather conditions.
2. It doesn't snow much in the South.
3. When #2 is not true, everything shuts down and few people attempt to drive.
4. There are no plows or salt trucks in most of the South.

Combined, these facts mean that very few people in a place like Georgia have any experience driving in typical Midwestern/Northeastern winter conditions. I would not expect anyone here to be good at it per se. But for the love of all that is holy, come on, people. Most aspects of winter driving require only a basic understanding of the laws of physics.

Wait. Maybe that's the problem.

In any event, in future "Snowpocalypses" please try to bear a few key pieces of information in mind or, failing that, to consult this website liberally on your mobile device (not whilst driving, of course).

The Basic Premise: Snow and ice reduce traction. Logically, then, the most dangerous parts of driving in ice and snow are accelerating and decelerating.

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Your goal is to maintain a nice, reasonable, consistent speed. You can drive in relative safety in snow, solid ice, slush, or freezing rain as long as you remember three things:

1) Slow down. Your F-250 King Cab 4×4 does not make you invincible. Your BMW X5 is not a yuppie snow plow. You can't go 20 over the limit on ice. As for all of you speeding along in your broke-ass 1994 Chevy Lumina on bald summer tires, as much as I would like your experiment to run its course and for you to be removed from the gene pool, I have no intention of being taken with you. All that said…

2) Speed the hell up. Listen to me. Listen as hard as you can. DRIVING 10 MPH IS NOT SAFE. In snow or in any other conditions. It is in fact terribly dangerous. What is wrong with you people? You are not driving through a Cambodian minefield with a collection of Faberge Eggs balanced carefully on your hood. It's just snow. Yes, driving really fast is dangerous. But if you ride your brake, everyone has to slam on the brakes when they come upon you or the massive line of cars forming right on your bumper.

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Plus…

3) You cannot ride the brake up an icy incline. Physics. Basic goddamn physics, kids. I saw no fewer than five cars stuck on inclines on Monday, each spinning its wheels like a coked-up teenager. Listen very carefully. If you do not give it some gas while going UP a hill, you are going to lose speed. Eventually you will lose so much speed that you will stop moving. Then when you decide to punch the gas, you will spin your wheels.
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Why? Because you are on fucking ice, "Son." Your car will just slide off in some non-forward direction.
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When you reach the ditch or the big pile of snow on the side of the road, you will be stuck. Or you will hit the car behind or next to you. Physics, people. Incline. No traction. Speed up.

I am glad we had this talk. Next week I will cover merging into moving highway traffic, parallel parking, and other mysterious skills of the Midwestern Yankee.

67 thoughts on “NPF: HOW TO DRIVE IN SNOW”

  • SaminMpls says:

    The bad driving happens in the Upper Midwest too, the difference being that 48 hours later everyone remembers how to drive in winter conditions. The first storm that brings out the snow plows usually does the trick but rush hour the night of the first snowfall is terrible.

    What concerns me is that the streets don't get plowed nearly as quickly as they did a few years earlier and schools were closed two days after the big December storm. In Minnesota that is completely unprecedented. I had a grand total of one snow day when I was in school and the weather was essentially the same.

  • John says:

    A wise man once explained to me the concept of tire grip, which is basically that your vehicle's tires can expend their given amount of traction doing some combination of three basic actions:

    1. Accelerating
    2. Braking
    3. Steering

    On ice, this does not change. What *does* change, obviously, is the lower amount of traction. This means that there's less grip to go around, so that for a given amount of acceleration, your steering response goes down as the ice gets thicker. Same for braking. The key, then, is to do all of your accelerating/braking in as straight a line as possible, and to get your foot off of the gas OR brakes when you are trying to turn. The reason you don't want to go flying down the ice is that in normal driving, most people slow down (brake) to make turns, and that braking eats up the grip, thus the turning doesn't actually happen. Calm, measured, and smooth motions will see you through, instead of being twitchy on the brakes and steering wheel.

    Of course, most people here in Georgia barely know basic math, let alone such simple physics. On top of, you know, being completely incompetent at driving. I walked into a classroom once, back in highschool after acing my driving test, and declared that anyone who failed the written portion was a complete moron. The number of dirty looks I got for that was *impressive*.

  • Ike says:

    I've lived in Washington, Northern Idaho, Alaska, and Upstate New York and I've seen plenty of folks who drive in a similarly retarded manner. I've also lived in NoVA and can attest to the absolute clusterfuck that happens whenever it rains or becomes icy.

    This Youtube clip is from Spokane, which gets several feet of snow and ice EVERY SINGLE WINTER. People still have problems.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBXzrlo69BQ

    Two years ago while driving through Yukon Territory in the middle of winter I saw an air-cooled VW beetle with New York license plates happily traveling north. An hour later I saw a real Mini Cooper. Not one of those new BMW thingies. Winter driving is an art. :-)

  • ts46064 says:

    "What concerns me is that the streets don't get plowed nearly as quickly as they did a few years earlier"
    Not sure about Minnesota but in Indiana you can blame politicians making "tough decisions" and lowering property taxes (main income for local gov.) thus leaving the locals with less money for snow removal.
    But hey, our taxes are lower!

  • ChrisBear says:

    'Snowmaggedon'! It sounds so much better. I try to yell it whenever someone tells me it is snowing.

    Here is MN, 94 was closed in one direction all morning- multi-car/truck pileup. After that, I saw no fewer than 2 cars crushed against the center wall on 100. In 10 miles of highway. As you pointed out, they invited others to the party, so there were another 4 cars with parts missing on the side of the road near them.

    Most cities spent their snow budget on December's storms. Now, I am always amazed and appreciative that they do any plowing or sanding. Skiing 12 miles to work would not fun…

  • Nick says:

    It's much more disturbing when these same things happen in places that, by all rights, should be accustomed to winter driving. I live in Salt Lake City. It's nearly a mile high. Average winter temperatures are in the 20s. The one thing we're famous for besides Mormons is our snow. And yet somehow, every year, people forget how to fucking drive, apparently thinking that once it hits July, they may as well just assume it'll be summer forever.

  • Sarah says:

    There are stories around here of the "winter storm of '88" about the 0.6 inches of snow that fell (I was in New England myself at the time, so I cannot sympathize). Everybody freaked the hell out, the airport shut down for three days, and all seven bridges spanning the river were shut down for that time span as well. Interestingly, for all the time I've spent in cold weather climates I've never actually had to drive in it and now I'm a diehard Floridian with over two decades of residence. So when my grandfather died in Minnesota just before Christmas a few years ago and my father was insisting that I had to go, I had to spell it out to my parents that I had absolutely no clue about how to drive on snow and ice and if I had to get a rental (to drive from Minneapolis to the boonies) I would be taking a crash course (literally) and might not make it back alive. They made arrangements for me to ride with other family members.

    Here's a blog post from someone who explains it better why it is that people in the South freak out so much over the rare winter storm: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/944495.html

  • comrade x says:

    In regard to Point 1, and this applies throughout the country, Your 4×4 Is Good In The Snow- Up To A Point. 4 Wheel drive is great for getting out of your driveway going 10 mph. It really doesn't do shit for you when you are barreling down the Interstate doing 80.
    Also, if you installed 19" rims on your SUV- surprise! You just made your 4X4 a giant ice skate!

  • A says:

    1 Don't get me started on merging. I deal with the equivalent of pond scum daily merging across 3 lanes to get into the exit lane. Yeah, the one that is full of cars. Yes, we all have someplace to go.

    Giant ice skate – classic. The only thing better are those cars that are 2 inches off the ground – especially when they get stuck on a speed bump.

  • Kit says:

    SUVs, you forgot to mention SUVs. Here's a hint: they don't STOP any faster than any other vehicle, so please get the fuck off of my bumper.

  • Major Kong says:

    I live in Ohio but I work in Memphis (long story). The drivers there are pretty scary on a good day.

    Usually half are trying to go 90 and the other half are trying to do 50 and lane markings are just a starting point for negotiations.

    When the light turns green be sure to check for the 3 cars running the red before entering the intersection.

    My "airport car" consists of a 1994 Buick Roadmaster. I wanted enough motor under the hood to stay out of their way and enough metal around me in case I couldn't.

    The couple times I've been there in the snow have been terrifying.

  • sluggo says:

    As an other Midwesterner exiled to the south, I can attest that this is true. While the Midwest had it's fair share of vehicular psychos and bad winter drivers, the south raises it to an art form. You folks still living in the north have no idea how bad these meatheads are.

    Let me describe this:

    Southern winter driving is Tea Party members with tons of steel on ice.

  • Inverarity says:

    I remember driving in a dusting of snow in Arkansas and seeing a Volvo go right off the road. I'm still not sure which was more notable – that there was a Volvo in Arkansas, or that someone managed to put one on the shoulder. They're the most stable and predictable cars around, for Pete's sake.

    While we might have a bit more experience driving in the winter weather, New England still has its share of idiotic snow drivers. If I ever want to get a good feel for the road conditions ahead, I just wait to be passed by a contractor's white pickup. He'll be doing 85, he won't have anything in the bed, and you can learn a lot by watching his truck's tail slew around. It's amazing that there aren't generic-white-truck hulks every hundred meters along the side of the road.

  • Eh says:

    Volvos are sorta crappy on the snow. They're boxy and safe, and built to withstand both the winter cold and the front end of the caffeine amped plow driver with his front end in your lane, but even when they converted to the cross country, they somehow managed to make a vehicle which has amazingly little traction. Everything about a Volvo has always screamed "snow" – hell the damn thing even has seat warmers, but despite being heavy, steel, and All wheel drive, the things wind up stuck in snow banks with ease.

    Get a SUBARU if you want a car for the snow.

  • jeneria says:

    Growing up in Montana, we used the first snow as a means of determining who were the Pilgrims (i.e. those who visited one summer, thought Montana was sooooo beautiful, and moved out without considering winter). Sure enough, 75% of the cars in the ditch had out-of-state plates on them. It made for good fun.

    When I lived in Bozeman, MT they decided plowing the streets was too expensive so they opted to only plow the "major" or "important" streets which meant all the streets around the college campus went unplowed. Nothing like driving through 3 feet berms with solid ice underneath. Not even the mighty Subaru could conquer it.

  • Katie says:

    I am a northern Indiana transplant in Texas. Your article could have been written for Texans. Once after a snowstorm up north the roads had not been plowed yet when I had to get to school. I spun off the road into a field but knew to keep my foot on the gas and directed my little car back on the road–in two feet of unplowed snow–without getting stuck. I would like to see a southerner try that!

    With any weather conditions (snow flurries, rain, wind, etc), the Texans freak out and drive like maniacs. Ok, they always drive like maniacs, but they're worst in different weather conditions.

    P.S. I absolutely love sluggo's description of southern drivers!

  • chautauqua says:

    Great post, Ed. But Minnesotans have their problems, too. Minnepolis blew through their entire snow removal budget for the year. Before Christmas.

  • Cackalacka says:

    Being a life-long resident of NC, I can attest to the fact that the one thing more predictable than southerner's pathological inability to drive on snow and ice, are the legions of cackles from the bemused transplants.

    While some of the recent arrivals are more familiar with the general concepts surrounding the Newtonian physics (and the subsequent changes in the coefficients of sliding/starting friction snow/ice entails) after a couple years of being down here, many transplants gradually lose their familiarity, and drive almost as stupidly as the natives.

    During the first snow-storm this year last month, I gradually made my way down I-40 to work. A welcome, recent, introduction to the area is the salter/sanders and plows, and there was a crew of 4 of these trucks, making their way in an echelon down the freeway.

    Much to my amusement, a gentlemen in a cherry '10 BMW 3-series, who was obviously VERY important, was tailgating one of the salters, ~ 6 feet off his rear bumper, as the salter (and general traffic) was going down the highway, pouring salt almost directly on this dude's car.

    Couple things: 1) Yeah dude, the salt truck is in the passing lane, but check this out, he's doing is job; he's not going to move over to let you by, even if you ride his tail.

    2) As much as I admire Bavarian engineering, dude, your disc breaks and run-flat tires are now essentially on par with the traction that the large truck that you can't see around; ergo if the dude stops short in front of you, you might have orphans for children.

    3) You see that substance pouring out of the back of the truck? That's salt. Most people in new cars try to avoid this substance, not apply it directly to their grills and hood.

    To say nothing of the idiots in 4x4s around here; I've seen quite a few 180-1080's/ditch spins from Broncos, F-seriies, you name the testosterone-mobile. I don't think it occurs to these folks that everyone has 4×4 breaks.

  • Geds says:

    Thank you, Ed.

    I'm a Chicagan who moved to Dallas last January. My new rule is, "Don't go out if it's snowing." The problem is that I know how to drive in this, but I'm likely the only one, which means I'll just be really pissed when some dingus in an extended cab F-250 turns my Mazda 6 in to a Mazda 2.

    Also, this:

    I am glad we had this talk. Next week I will cover merging into moving highway traffic, parallel parking, and other mysterious skills of the Midwestern Yankee.

    I get stuck dealing with morons who don't understand how to merge EVERY. SINGLE. MORNING. Then again EVERY. SINGLE. EVENING. And I'm on the expressway for a grand total of about four miles each way.

    I do not understand how people don't figure out that if the cars to their left are going 60 they should probably also be going 60 by the time they're getting in to that flow of traffic. But they slow down or hit their brakes and just expect everyone to GTFO of their way. Then at the very next entrance when some jerkass is trying to merge at 45 that same idiot forces the newcomer do drive down the shoulder because the insistend indulgence of the previous half mile is now a grand imposition.

    One of these days it's gonna give me an aneurysm.

  • Andy Brown says:

    The trick to winter driving I think is to always assume that braking and turning isn't going to work, at least the first moment you try it. Giving yourself a few opportunities of achieving traction before you ram that indestructible van in front of you is usually a worthwhile idea. Driving a 97 Saturn held together by dirt and affection also helps keep one humble, of course.

  • Mike says:

    Variable road conditions are the biggest challenge of winter driving. The "other guy" driving too fast or too slow is aggravating and easy to perceive as dangerous, but it's usually inconsistent road surfaces that cause the backups and accidents. People get pissed off sitting in winter traffic, not realizing the reason for the backup is a pair of waist-high snow berms left by a plow on a cross street a few blocks ahead. Or else they take a right turn off the plowed highway onto an unplowed side street.

    My hypothesis is that if winter driving has gotten worse over the years, one reason why is because there are more vehicles today with automatic transmissions. Downshifting is a much more effective way to check your speed on variable winter roads than hitting the brakes. If everyone drove a stick-shift, maybe winter traffic would flow more consistently??

  • bob_is_boring says:

    I've lived in the midwest, northeast, southwest, and Texas and visited plenty of other places. It is my observation that, according to "locals":

    1) everyone/everywhere has the worst drivers in the world omg evaroneoneone; and

    2) everyone/everywhere has the weirdest weather in the world omg evar one eleven.

    That said, people in Texas are scared as shit of snow.

  • Mike says:

    @Eh…excellent point. For most basic winter driving, as much as we see here in OR, a Subaru is fantastic and I've driven in crappy conditions with far less qualified vehicles. Also, I am, as most of you are, consistently amazed with how people either a) fail to alter their driving habits to accommodate bad weather, and b) overcompensate their driving habits to the point of being unsafe. Winter driving in OR is possible, even though they have very few plows, no salt, and some sanding trucks.

  • Johann says:

    Colorado's drivers have jumped on the 4×4 SUV trend. My favorite winter-driving saying, inspired by those folks? "Four-wheel-drive does not mean four-wheel-stop".

  • Kulkuri says:

    Years ago The Kid made trip with a friend from the upper Mid-West to Colorado. They ran into snow and ice across Iowa. She said of the vehicles in the median or the ditch, the SUVs had rolled but the cars had stayed on their wheels.

    Thickness of the ice has nothing to do with traction, if it did you'd not see vehicles out on lakes driven by ice fisherman. What does have something to do with traction on snow and ice is temperature. The colder it is the better the traction, the closer it is to 32 degrees or above the slipper it is because there will be a film of water on the ice to grease things.

  • johnsmith1882 says:

    As a veteran of twenty years of driving in snow and ice in Chicago, I've gotta add my two cents: turn into the skid, guys. It sounds backwards, but fishtail once into a neighbor's lawn, taking out their mailbox and poor little stick of a young tree (like a certain someone did at the age of 16, ahem), and you'll remember it like Newton's third law.

  • Mrs. Chili says:

    Ed, Honey, even here in New England, where you would expect people to know better, these rules are never, ever followed. In fact, I find myself uttering something akin to "having an SUV does NOT exempt you from Newton's laws of motion, you IDIOT" all winter long.

    Ugh.

    Also? I've been reading "The Unasked Question" to my classes for days now. Thank you for that…

  • sluggo says:

    Today is Lee-Jackson day in Virginia, celebrating The War of Southern Treason and Yankee Ass Kicking. I bet none of those fuckers could drive in the snow either.

  • mwing says:

    Dear Mr. G&T,
    This behavior is not confined to Southerners. A few years ago I had cause to drive from Boston, MA to Saratoga Springs, NY, through the Berkshires, in what turned out to be a major blizzard arriving from the direction I was going into. In a 1991 Corolla. What should have been a 3-hour drive took 7, with near-zero visibility. On the way I must have passed 8 accidents/ cars off the road, half of which I saw happening, and those were due simply to too much speed for the conditions. I felt terrible about not stopping, but could not have pulled over safely, nor even found the edge of the road, and if I had done so I'd have been stuck forever. I had no cell 'phone, and could not call on anyone's behalf, nor could I have identified where on the highway any of us were.
    None of us should have been on the highway at all. My excuse is, no TV and somehow entirely missed news of the storm. My fellow drivers? Maybe the same, but it seems unlikely they were ALL Luddites. I think modern cars and SUVs have made even New Englanders way-overconfident about snow driving.

  • mothra says:

    Here's to Mike and mwing: Yep, the problem is all the freaking SUVs and cars without standard transmission. I don't get to exercise my snow skills in Albq. much any more, but when I do, I rarely touch the brakes, instead shifting to slow and stop. Works wonders. But all these jokers who seem to think that the SUV will stop on ice *just because* kill me–as well as anyone else in their path. On Thanksgiving Day we had something like a 20-car pileup on one of the flyovers on our interchange here. Why? Because there had been a tiny little ice storm early that morning and a bunch o'asshats were driving down the freeway at the regular over-the-speed-limit clip. Yep. They found out what black ice was real quick.

    And, from the annals of my driving stories: one time I was driving along here in Albq. about a week after a big snowstorm. Most of the snow was all melted off the roads, but there were spots in the shade that still had very stubborn sheets of ice. So I come sailing up to a stoplight in a shady lane and completely forget about the ice. Yep. Spun. 380. Completely in my lane. The look on the adjacent motorist's face was priceless… Har.

  • jehrler says:

    Mike, I think you nailed it. We have a Saab 9-5 Wagon (360K miles and going strong) with a manual transmission here in MN and I wouldn't trade that manual for anything.

    It is absolutely essential when navigating roads of uncertain friction to be in a lower gear that, when you lift off the gas, immediately begins, without spinning, to slow you down.

    I fear that in just a few years manuals will no longer be available at all. sigh.

  • suilebhan says:

    As a Chicagoan in exile here in Georgia, one of the Confederate States of Tea Party America, i lmao at your "lesson." I've just spent the past 6 days iced in. I live in one of those hilly and shady subdivisions. There's no way out once the ice sets in. Yet, every time it gets like this, the natives insist on trying to get out. Half the cars in the subdivision wind up parked at the communal swimming pool; it has a parking lot and is the lowest point in the neighborhood. And these einsteins usually take out a mailbox or two before they end up parked there. Having a pickup or SUV doesn't magically give them traction on ice. Oh well, they also think evolution is "just a theory."

  • dick nixon says:

    One winter, after flying into Cleveland with a group of engineers from our southernmost plant they they asked me (a yankee transplant) why the snow plow was salting dry roads. These were engineers, mind you.

    I told them to go back to their peoples, and around the communal fire, tell them of the wonders of "presalting" before an ice storm. Works like a charm. Tough concept to get across to rednecks, however.

  • Drouse says:

    Many many moons ago I did a tour in Korea. For some unknowable reason someone in the chain of command decreed that we would not remove the road pads from the track shoes at the start of the winter manuvers. What images does the phrase 13 ton bobsled bring to mind?

  • Cokehead says:

    I can attest to the forgetfulness of midwesterners. We've had some snow around here, but the plows have been getting it cleaned up fast, and it hasn't been enough.

    Today's the real first snow. I'm ashamed to admit I was sliding around the road on my way home from work this morning. But those instincts come back quick, no worries :D

  • jjack says:

    The thing that drives me absolutely fucking nuts is when you have to stop at a light on an incline (I usually try to avoid coming to a complete stop but sometimes it's impossible to keep rolling until the light turns green) and the douchebag behind you creeps right up to your bumper. But nobody ever said this place is known for the remarkable intelligence of its local population.

    I used to work for this company and their main business was to build roads made completely out of ice. The traffic on these roads was composed completely out of large trucks. It can be done…

  • lm says:

    So, my right leaning friend (OK, she's a teabagger) called to commiserate with me over the horrible road conditions leading to a metric-fuck-ton of lost business and municipal revenue in the state. She opined, "you'd think all the businesses could get together and throw in money to purchase some snowplows!"

    Imagine her surprise when I revealed that we already have such a system in place and that, in many parts, those who contribute said funds often, oh… say, 'elect' one of their own to, perhaps represent them, and work in some sort of committee fashion to make said purchase.

  • Hobbes says:

    I love how people are yelling "no Ed you're wrong it's not just southerners people can't drive in New York either". Did you miss the Midwestern part of "Midwestern Yankee"?

    I lived in VA last year and I adopted the same philosophy as Geds – I know how to drive in snow but fuck if the rest of y'all do, so I'm staying off the roads. Unfortunately that meant staying home, because I'd left my snow boots back in Wisconsin (under the impression that I wouldn't need them), but guess what – I had enough food in my house to last the day and a half before the snow all melted! I didn't have to go hungry, or stock up on milk, bread and hot dogs (seriously, those were the three top selling food items before blizzards).

  • Nate says:

    You don't need a manual transmission to drop to a lower gear. Automatics have lower gears as well. They work just the same. I drive a pretty hefty box truck all around South Central Indiana. In winter, the lower gears totally work and make performing my job safe and possible.

  • Georgia Jeff says:

    Now Ed…As a native born and raised Georgian, I can speak to your commentary from both a local and, more or less global, perspective.

    I drive a Nissan Frontier 4X4 and for the winter dirving I use the following product on all four wheels in four-wheel drive:

    http://www.scc-chain.com/Traction%20Pages/Trac_SZ6.html

    It is like driving on pavement, only colder.

    So, point by point:

    1. As to your glib and amuzing condescention toward southerners, I have seen the 'shit-for-brains and head way-up their ass' individual in many countries, in fact in al most every state in the U.S, and in every country I have ever visited, which are numerous, there are plenty of assholes to go around. We have no monpoly on this. Even where you live…

    2. We get one or two significant winter weather events in Georgia every year, especially where I live. (I live in the center of the site-shooting for the movie 'Deliverance'.) I am thirteen miles from

    3. Not driving is a good alternative to becoming a traffic fatality on ice, which we get WAY more of than snow. No one, not even a genius like yourself, can drive on ice.

    4. We do have a limited number of plows and salt trucks. It is not a financially justifiable expense.

  • tybee says:

    "snow" here in georgia often turns rapidly to sheets of ice and no one can drive on wet ice. no one.

    and in my part of the state, we only see "snow" on the roads once every 20 years or so – last time was 1989. paralyzed the place for 3 days…

  • lm says:

    @xynzee: lots of dead air and "huh? wah?" and, finally, a sheepish, "oh, yeah…changethesubject"
    It's been days and I still marvel at the lack of connection!

    @tybee: Snow turns to ice everywhere very rapidly…anywhere the sun is available, and that is pretty much everywhere on earth. That is why, in many parts of the country (usually the blue parts), folks gather their taxes, buy the appropriate equipment (plows, spreaders) and hire folks to be at the ready when such weather strikes. The idea is to get it off the road before it becomes ice. It costs less than what business and government lost in revenue, even in storage. The North isn't particularly known for loads of heat, but we all bought air conditioners when they became available.

    I've lived here for nearly 20 years and, so help me, I hear this load of crap every.fucking.year. It snows here. It's going to snow more and more, every year, as the earth heats. We may not have to teach science in parts of this state, but we sure as fuck do have to live by it.

    American Exceptionalism was born in the South.

  • Georgia Jeff says:

    @Im Says-American Exceptionalism wasn't born in the South. It was born in the mind of a Alexis de Tocquevillle.

  • Tosh says:

    @IM: kinda like training pants; real men only use those in the mountains in 2 foot or better.. They also really tear up the road. soo not impressed and, in all actuality, a clear indicator of the inability to handle winter road conditions. But… whatever get you through the night…

  • lm says:

    @tybee
    Have you ever lived anywhere else?
    If not, you would be simply shocked at how many municipalities make ready to do the work of government. Harder in red states where "gubmint" is treated as enemy/taxes for suckers.

    In the South, it should be easy enough to find a pick up truck. Not too hard or expensive to put a friggin plow attachment on one and pay someone to drive it through the main streets. ( They are < 2K.) You can even get them for ATVs for cryin' out loud (they're about $700). Not being able to maintain roads due to weather is unacceptable. Having school cancelled in cities as large as Atlanta is just idiotic.

  • tybee says:

    @IM – your claims are almost as funny as listening to your ilk whine about the heat in august. :)

    yes, i've lived elsewhere. yanqis can't drive on wet ice either. too many winters spent up above boston prove that you're just not being honest about the situation.

  • Pineyman says:

    Oh. Dear. God. I am so glad I swallowed my mouthful of soda before I read this. Obviously you have also been in NJ, since points #2 & 3 apply across the board here. I am PA transplant and I find myself screaming at these frigging idiots to speed the f*ck up or get off the road. Unless, of course they're in a yuppiemobile…then keep going at that slightly subsonic speed.

  • Frisbee says:

    I was wasting away on twitter trying to find something to cure my boredom – and WHIZ – somebody I follow tweeted this post. Now, I am not quite as bored. Thanks for posting nice material. – Frisbee

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