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Beware, the snow slugs are out in full force today.

ucfgrad93 said:
I live in Colorado, so yeah, I understand what it is like to drive in snow. People should be cautious when driving in winter conditions. That means slowing down.
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Agreed. Born and raised in Nebraska, so whatever snow you had the first day, we got your leftovers the following day! :p Good thing for us is that we took what we wanted and passed the rest on to Chicago. :D

But you're right, we should be used to it; living in Vegas, I know I still was, and living in NorCal, even now I still am, especially with being only 100 miles from Reno. Though the big difference is mountainous snow is different from white-out snow on the plains. At least you have some protection from near white out conditions as you can sit on one side of a given mountain and wait it out. The plains have now love there.

Either way, we can take a pounding and still know how to drive in it, especially if it's freezing rain, or rains, freezes overnight, then snows after that. That's when it gets dangerous..

But I don't understand parts of the Eastern Seaboard. in early 2000, I had to spend January - March in Philadelphia for training. One day it "snowed". The "snow" was barely up to the sole of your shoe, and they closed down the town. Coming from the Midwest, it would have to be at least 20 degrees Fahrenheit under that, with a harsh wind chill factor for us to even have school canceled!

Anyway, scratching my head thinking Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, I drove into town, picked up a cheesesteak and headed back to my hotel. On the way across the Ben Franklin Bridge I was passed by this truck who thought that just because he had big wheels on it, he'd be okay in snow. He hit the apex of the bridge at at least 60mph. I was going no more than 40, because it had rained the previous night. He also didn't see that people were paying toll on the New Jersey side of the bridge either; a couple of fishtails and a doughnut later, he was going grill first into the Delaware.

The USS JFK had to fish his truck out of the water.

My point: Sometimes you have to be thankful for those snow slugs. At least you weren't like this idiot, who was ticketed for speeding, repairs to the bridge, and sent a bill by the Feds for undocking one of their ships to sail the 4 miles up the Delaware to fish out his souped up truck.

BL.
 
mobilehaathi said:
Perhaps, and this is merely a hypothesis, the people driving 'too fast' are getting into accidents with people driving appropriately cautious, and maybe they feel the need to shift the blame onto others (i.e. "Clearly the other party was going too slow!").

Driving in snow is dangerous at any speed, but I'm not convinced the shape of this curve is concave up.
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Statistically, driving at high speed in poor weather conditions may lead to a higher probability of an accident than at lower speeds. However, accidents do happen at any speed under every weather condition. The issue with traffic during snow or rain or bright sun (and the premise of the OP’s post), is not due to accidents. In fact, most weather related traffic is not due to the presence of an accident on the roadway. Logically, if you exclude accidents from the traffic equation, it is a undeniable fact that people driving too slow are the main cause of traffic. Driving excessively fast does not and cannot cause a slowdown in traffic.

I’m not saying that driving cautiously in poor weather is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. The problem is when people go way overboard and drive too slow for the weather conditions. The problem is that this is all subjective. What one person considers good road conditions may freak out another person and they consider it poor….thus, driving excessively slow. Those are the kind of people who should stay off the road.
 
Gutwrench said:
So there's just a little snow falling in the Twin Cities this morning. Nothing too unusual nor is it even remotely heavy.

I left the house a little earlier today for my normal 25 minute commute to work. Now roughly one hour later I'm only about 25% of my way there. Here I sit in stop and go traffic apparently waiting for spring.

I just checked "Today" and it is wanting me the traffic is unusually heavy and I should arrive to work sometime in April.

Good grief this is Minnesota, it's not like we haven't driven in a dusting of snow before. I'm usually the one silently swearing at the reckless 4 wheel drive pick ups and SUVs who feel the laws of physics don't apply to them hoping they'd slide under a gas truck and taste their own blood. But this commute is ridiculous.
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Pennsylvania gets like that too and we rarely have snow anymore. A little bit of flurries and people instantly forget how to drive and slide all over the place and wreck.

Not everyone can drive well in snow, the people who can't know they can't and shouldn't be out in it.
 
Antares said:
No, being too cautious is just as bad. Neither of these are good options. This is the real problem. A lot of people are operating on these two extremes. Either being too reckless or too cautious. If people learned to drive appropriately for the conditions, we wouldn't have as many of the weather related traffic issues that we do.
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Got it. If we could teach everyone to drive like you do, there would be no accidents. :rolleyes:
 
Gregg2 said:
Got it. If we could teach everyone to drive like you do, there would be no accidents. :rolleyes:
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How so? I would argue that my driving style doesn’t make me any safer from potential accidents than any other normal driver. I may be a safe driver but that doesn’t mean if I taught people to drive like I do, that they would be accident free. Nobody can make this assumption, no matter how skilled you are (or think you are). Why would you? I’m flattered but why would you make that assumption about me? I merely advocate driving appropriately for the weather conditions. Which many people don’t (driving either way too fast or too slow). Again, it boils down to extremes. Black or white, all or nothing, extreme conservative or fanatic liberal, 0 or 1, on or off, very fast or very slow, etc… Just like everything else, while driving there are other options than the extremes.

The thing is, accidents are not only caused by your own driving but also other people. You can be the safest driver in the world but that will not stop some fool from swerving in and out of lanes and not having enough room, thus hitting you. Accidents can and do also result from sudden mechanical failures in cars (like an axel cracking, causing your car to jerk to the left into oncoming traffic, your breaks suddenly failing or any number of other things….). Accidents can be caused by road hazards ( a pothole opening up in front of you. Metal from an overpass falling on your car, etc..). My point is, the only way to avoid the risk of being in a car accident is to never step into a car.

But this thread wasn’t started to talk about car accidents. The OP was discussing people driving too slow for no apparent reason…other than them panicking about and forgetting to how to drive in the snow.
 
Jessica Lares said:
A single centimeter of ice on the road here in Texas, and everything gets cancelled for the day. :rolleyes: We've been under a winter storm watch since Monday.

73 F right now, RealFeel is 79. :p
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How do you like it now? ;)

With almost a half-inch of ice in the forecast, nobody in Dallas is getting very far unless they have studded tires.
 
elistan said:
How do you like it now? ;)

With almost a half-inch of ice in the forecast, nobody in Dallas is getting very far unless they have studded tires.
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Hahahahahaha. 30 F right now with a RealFeel of 22, I saw this earlier and it made me laugh:

http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/ilate-week-ice-storm-texas-to-pennsylvania/20571898

Unless it completely stops us from opening the door this time around, I'm not worried. I lived through that Super Bowl a few years ago where we had all that snow which was far worse.
 
snow? you can count on a traffic jam whenever that happens here in los angeles.......too many people want to drive over to actually see real snow :eek:
 
The real problem is that few people adequately prepare themselves for driving in winter conditions, and then are completely surprised every time they have to drive on anything other than a wet road. I can see it if you live in Texas, but if you live in Minnesota, New England, the mountains, etc. - anywhere that gets regular snow and freezing, there is NO excuse for not having snow tires and having spent some time learning how to drive when traction is not absolutely perfect.
 
Antares said:
How so? I would argue that my driving style doesn’t make me any safer from potential accidents than any other normal driver. I may be a safe driver but that doesn’t mean if I taught people to drive like I do, that they would be accident free. Nobody can make this assumption, no matter how skilled you are (or think you are). Why would you? I’m flattered but why would you make that assumption about me?
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Well, by implication, if some drive too fast and some too slow, then there is a "just right". You might call that the Goldilocks driver, which presumably you are, since you've been able to determine what is too fast and too slow.

It's well known that what causes many accidents, regardless of weather conditions, is varying speeds. Well, there are millions of drivers out there, so by sheer coincidence, some are driving at the same speed. If we could just get them all in the same state, we'd solve a big part of the problem.
 
zhenya said:
The real problem is that few people adequately prepare themselves for driving in winter conditions, and then are completely surprised every time they have to drive on anything other than a wet road. I can see it if you live in Texas, but if you live in Minnesota, New England, the mountains, etc. - anywhere that gets regular snow and freezing, there is NO excuse for not having snow tires and having spent some time learning how to drive when traction is not absolutely perfect.
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I've never bought snow tires, just all season radials. I've found winter diving in Iowa is much harder than Minnesota.
 
Gutwrench said:
I've never bought snow tires, just all season radials. I've found winter diving in Iowa is much harder than Minnesota.
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Then you are part of the problem, whether you realize it or not. The difference in handling, and most importantly, stopping distance, is enormous.

And the cost difference is actually very minimal if you intend to keep the car more than 3 years as each set of tires ends up lasting twice as long.
 
Weeeeeell! As far as the appropriate speed debate goes, consider this:

There were two multi-vehicle pile-ups here within the last few days. One of them was caught on DOT cameras. After there were at least 4 or 5 cars stopped on the expressway, and some *****s out of their vehicles standing in the midst of them, more cars appeared from the snow going so fast that they could not stop, causing further damage, and one fatality.

Those who were late to the party were traveling at what must have seemed to them a reasonable speed. They were still on the road, not slipping a bit. But, when the stopped vehicles came into view from the shroud of falling snow in front of them, it was too late to adjust. So their speed was fine for driving, but for stopping, not so much.

As far as snow tires vs. all season, I go with the latter. I'm too hung up on rotating after the recommended mileage. Sure, you could mark them so they go back on the same wheels, but keeping track of when they were last rotated would be a headache I don't want. So, when it snows, I drive slower.
 
Gregg2 said:
Weeeeeell! As far as the appropriate speed debate goes, consider this:

There were two multi-vehicle pile-ups here within the last few days. One of them was caught on DOT cameras. After there were at least 4 or 5 cars stopped on the expressway, and some *****s out of their vehicles standing in the midst of them, more cars appeared from the snow going so fast that they could not stop, causing further damage, and one fatality.

Those who were late to the party were traveling at what must have seemed to them a reasonable speed. They were still on the road, not slipping a bit. But, when the stopped vehicles came into view from the shroud of falling snow in front of them, it was too late to adjust. So their speed was fine for driving, but for stopping, not so much.

As far as snow tires vs. all season, I go with the latter. I'm too hung up on rotating after the recommended mileage. Sure, you could mark them so they go back on the same wheels, but keeping track of when they were last rotated would be a headache I don't want. So, when it snows, I drive slower.
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:confused: This makes no sense. As you say, you mark the tires for position when you remove them and you resume your rotation schedule in the spring. That's an awfully weak excuse for avoiding good tires...

Consider this in your pile-up example. In a recent Finnish magazine test of various studded and non-studded snow tires, the difference in stopping distances on ice between the best studded tire and the worst studless snow tire they tested was nearly NINETY feet from only 30 mph speed! Imagine how much further an all-season is, let alone an all-season that is half or more worn. Easily another 90 feet. Would you like to have an extra couple hundred feet of time to avoid an accident? How much is that worth to you?

It's an indisputable fact, good winter tires make a far bigger difference than anything else in staying safe on winter roads.
 
I too am in the Twin Cities. Thanks to the temps that are sub-salt-being-effective, my commute home has been 1 hour every night instead of 20 minutes.

Driving slow is better than driving fast like the asshats in SUVs who don't realize 4WD really doesn't provide any advantage besides getting moving from a stand still, but there are people out there who are snow slugs that are terrified and shouldn't be on the road without knowing how to drive in winter conditions. Nothing is more pathetic than seeing someone whine on facebook about how their car isn't good in snow and how they are all uptight when they are driving a FWD car.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: Someone who can't handle a FWD car in the winter shouldn't be on the road at all. It would be a catastrophe if they had a RWD car like the world had for decades.

Up until my current car, I've only ever had RWD cars, usually on wide all season tires and I've never had a problem. What that did was taught me how to drive properly in the winter, and I've never had an accident and only have been stuck once, when I was 17 when I had to stop on a hill I normally wouldn't have had to. Honestly IMO everyone should learn how to drive in the snow in RWD, where you have both the front wheels to steer and the rear wheels to drive the car, the latter of which can be controlled with the throttle as well. Start to get loose in RWD? Let off the gas, it corrects itself. Nobody will probably agree with me, but RWD cars are easier and much more predictable in the snow, and they make you a much better driver. If a FWD car starts to let go, thanks to understeer that takes both the steering and the throttle wheels with it, it's gone with nothing but dead weight behind and there's no recovery.

As for snow tires, I've never used them, never known anyone that did, and seldom see anyone with them in the north. Not saying they aren't extra insurance, but most likely unnecessary if you know how to drive in the conditions you are in.
 
zhenya said:
:confused: This makes no sense. As you say, you mark the tires for position when you remove them and you resume your rotation schedule in the spring. That's an awfully weak excuse for avoiding good tires...

... the difference in stopping distances on ice between the best studded tire and the worst studless snow tire they tested was nearly NINETY feet from only 30 mph speed! Imagine how much further an all-season is, let alone an all-season that is half or more worn. Easily another 90 feet. Would you like to have an extra couple hundred feet of time to avoid an accident? How much is that worth to you?

It's an indisputable fact, good winter tires make a far bigger difference than anything else in staying safe on winter roads.
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I agree that it's a weak excuse, and that snow tires give you better traction than all season tires. I've only regretted my choice one time: it snowed early during the week before my planned visit on Saturday to a tire store to get new tires. I had to turn around and take another route because I couldn't get up a hill.

There's one thing that makes a bigger difference than tires, as our retired member mentions above: don't drive.

Switching and rotating:

55,072 new regular tires
57,941 new snow tires put on
[do the math] miles driven on regular tires without rotating
58,529 snow tires removed
[do the math] miles driven on snow tires without rotating
[do the math] mileage until regular tires need rotating
61,911 snow tires put back on
[do the math] miles remaining before regular tires need rotating

Etc.

Yeah, I'll stick with all season tires. But that's just me. Lame? I'll accept that.
 
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