4 ms·

Many people are seriously afraid of driving in snow and even recommend things like never driving in it. I come from a snowy region and have never lost control o

by clnq 3y ago

Many people are seriously afraid of driving in snow and even recommend things like never driving in it. I come from a snowy region and have never lost control of my car unintentionally for more than a second in snow. I used to drive over a hundred thousand miles in snow each year for about one decade in my life. Sometimes the car slips a bit when doing something sudden but it’s quickly resolved by not doing the thing (sudden braking, sudden turning, sudden acceleration, and so on). With proper tyres and the roads being salted, and aside from needing to be a bit less sudden about movements, I have never felt more at risk in the snow than out of it. What is there to be afraid of? Are these people driving with Summer tyres or is there some other reason they seem to find snow so problematic? Perhaps the roads are not salted in the US? Are studded tyres allowed? Is it just that some regions like the US generally do very poorly with driving safety and the “snow effect” is more visible? https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norway-has-worlds-safest-roads/ https://www.lifeinnorway.net/norway-has-worlds-safest-roads/ says, for example, that only 2 fatal crashes happen a year in Norway due to phone distractions. I think this is higher in the US? The author says there are many accidents after heavy snowfalls, but this is not observably the case in most northern European countries that have about an equal number of snow and non-snow days a year. There may be more accidents in snow, but you cannot observe the increase naturally. Genuinely hoping to understand. Never experienced anything like what some people who are mortified of driving in the snow describe.

jorlow 3y ago
Even in places that get a healthy amount of snow (e.g. in the Midwest of USA), many don't have snow tires -- it's a cost and inconvenience they try to avoid.
- clnq 3y ago
  Wow, that is really amazing.
  - razeh 3y ago
    I live in a walkable inner ring Chicago suburb, and commute to work by bike or the El. Snow cleanup is excellent in our suburb, and we can get to things we want to drive to in bad weather on roads where the speed limit is never over 25 mph. We just don’t need winter tires.
    - clnq 3y ago
      Very interesting how different the approach is. Many European countries mandate Winter tyres for a period each year, even if they do not get much snow - https://www.uniroyal-tyres.com/car/tyre-guide/winter-care/winter-tyres-mandatory https://www.uniroyal-tyres.com/car/tyre-guide/winter-care/wi.... The mindset is more that if there could be snow, drivers must use Winter tyres, even when road clean-up and salting are used. Many countries here that do not mandate Winter tyres for the whole season still mandate tyres appropriate for driving conditions, which reads a lot like a requirement to use Winter, studded, or chained tyres in snow. Most countries like that also recommend Winter tyres. It's a very different approach from having many people not use Winter tyres in snow. I think this explains the fear of driving in snow to me. I would be very concerned if I had to drive in snow with Summer tyres as well.
  - mrep 3y ago
    Why? I have all season tires and they work fine enough when it does snow but I also don’t drive much. When I looked into getting winter tires, I saw they generally last 60,000 miles or 6 years whatever comes first and since I only drive like 5,000 miles a year, that means I’d have to replace 2 sets of tires every 6 years instead of 1. If I drove 20,000 miles a year though I’d definitely get them.
    - clnq 3y ago
      It's amazing how large the mindset difference is between the US and European countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937993. You are talking about whether these tyres make sense. In many countries in Europe, this is not a question. It is mandated. I agree with your reasoning from an economic perspective, of course.
blibble 3y ago
in snow, I'm scared of other people on the road
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Tbf this is a good attitude to have even when it's not snowing.
mywacaday 3y ago
On a visit to a friend in Norway we went up the mountains, the road was white and we were doing a consistent 60 kph. We stopped to take some photos and I noticed there was about an inch of ice on the road. In Norway you leagally have to have winter tyres and your driving test has an individual ice exam along with motorway and night exams. Training and the right equipment make most things a lot safer.
Retric 3y ago
Snow and ice provide more friction at colder temperatures. People who occasionally get snow are essentially placed in the worse possible condition an at or slightly above freezing surface. They aren’t using snow tires because the roads aren’t covered in snow long enough and nobody is replacing their tires for 48 hours after a once or twice a winter storm. So, the normal response is to avoid driving in it, which means they never learn how to drive in snow.
sokoloff 3y ago
Many (perhaps most) drivers have a mental model of driving that bypasses any understanding of traction circle and tire slippage. "When I want to go faster, I push this button under my right foot; when I want to stop, I push the other button to its left. It's usually safe to drive 8 mph over what the speed limit sign says." Those people are going to find snow problematic, because to drive effectively in snow, you need to have a better understanding of vehicle dynamics than is required to extract 0.25g of acceleration from your car on a clean and dry road. Even in New England (where we get a half dozen to dozen snow events per year), people often stay home in the worst of it, waiting until the main road are mostly clear, and then they go charging out on those mostly clear roads with their all-wheel drive, ABS, and traction control and then come to grief on a section that isn't in the set of mostly clear because "it was fine for the last 20 miles".
- tharkun__ 3y ago
  And if I read your parent correctly he's mostly driving on said "mostly clear" roads as well, since he mentions salt. If the road is salted and bare you're not driving in snow. You're driving on a regular road. That's not snow driving, period. When we've had fresh snow and you have 2 or 3 inches of snow that moves around under your tires, driving is way different. That turn you're supposed to go 50 kph in but would love to take at 70 kph under normal conditions? You really want to slow down because you really don't want to drive on your lane, you want to kinda drive in the middle of the road because you aren't actually sure where the lane ends as it's all just white. The snow will make your car move where you didn't want it to go and while you of course can steer against that to correct if you go too fast and too close to the edge of the road on a left turn you're gonna end up in the ditch. And you don't want to go 70 or even 50 if you're essentially making the road one lane. Sudden braking and all ... Of course a few days after the snow storm you have a hard packed snow surface that has had crushed stone (yes, no salt, the side streets here are not salted) spread on it. You can't drive exactly like it's summer but for the most part you can. You also now know where the ditch is (aka a wall of snow). Still, every year there's two places not 500m from my home where a snow plow regularly finds itself in the ditch while trying to clear snow and has to be pulled out. Even though they put down stakes in fall.
swarnie 3y ago
I drive a sensible European car with standard road tires, it wont climb a 2-3 degree incline with 1 inch of snow on it. I have never meet a person in real life with alternative weather tires. Its just not a thing in my country.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MaulingMonkey 3y ago
> What is there to be afraid of? All the other idiots on the road with minimal/no snow experience, refrozen sleety wet black ice that's far more treacherous than proper dry snow, hills, roads that are not merely not salted, but so snowed in that even emergency services become unable to move around due to unplowed roads and getting snowed in, ... I'm arrogant enough to be willing to drive in Seattle snow with careful hill-avoiding route planning (and paranoid checking of hill-prone cross traffic.) Still managed to spend half an hour picking at the ice with a shovel the last time I did so when I didn't give it enough gas to get fully into a parking spot and became utterly immobile on the ice the last time I did so. This is what we're afraid of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg Or just this last winter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GButmfkNGmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GButmfkNGmg > Are these people driving with Summer tyres Yes > Perhaps the roads are not salted in the US? Inadequately > Are studded tyres allowed? Depends on the locale - not all-year around around here (tears up the road?), and I don't believe studded tyres are sufficient to be legal to go through the passes.
rorroe53 3y ago
Yep, proper tires (ideally studded), reasonable speed and avoiding sudden movements is all there is to driving in snowy/icy conditions. Not doing any of these three things can get you into trouble. Here in Finland statistically the most deadly months in traffic are in summer, when there's no snow or ice, and weather conditions are generally good. Holidays and great weather encourage people to drive fast, stay awake late, and drink alcohol.
throwaway22032 3y ago
I've driven in northern Norway with snow tyres. You're correct in saying that it's relatively safe and easy to do. In the UK no-one even switches to winter tyres when it's cold. With snow or ice people are running on 5-10 year old summer tyres with the minimum legal tread depth. Plus we're basically always in the melt-refreeze zone around 5 to -5c vs. a proper Norwegian winter at -10 to -40 whereby your car can form ice that will just never melt unless it's an ICE. It's just not the same at all. I miss proper winters!
- mattlondon 3y ago
  I see a lot of cars in the UK with tyres like Michelin crossclimates. I have them on my car too. FWIU they are basically an all-season tyre that has 75% the capability of a winter tyre ... Not just snow but also general wet weather etc when under 5c. There are loads of videos of YouTube of Cars using them driving up ski slopes etc. They seem like a good compromise for me for UK climate.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  The thing about the UK is that it snows so infrequently* that it's just not worth the investment to deal with it properly. Where I live in the south, I think we've had snow on the roads maybe twice in the last four years, each time for only 1-2 days. The entire country grinds to a halt when it happens, but it happens rarely. *Or at least it's infrequent these days, I'm sure it snowed a lot more often when I was growing up, and my parents tell me that back in their day it would reliably snow a lot every winter. Must be a Chinese hoax.
  - throwaway426079 3y ago
    We had snow on my street for about 5 days early this year (not a main road so didn't get cleared). Didn't grind to a halt at all - just needed a bit more care to get to the main road, which was cleared. I drive an ordinary FWD car with standard tires.
vrc 3y ago
I’ve lived in the northeastern US my whole life, and the number of people I know who don’t bother with snow tires and run “all-seasons” is shockingly high. The fact that a FWD or RWD car on winter tires is usually easier to drive in snow than an AWD with all-seasons is lost on them.
rainsford 3y ago
I learned to drive in a snowy part of the US and spent my first several years as a driver in those kind of conditions. When I moved to a place that gets much less snow, but still some, I had the same sort of attitude...how are people here so freaked out and bad at this? But having lived in less snowy conditions for quite a while now, I've learned some pretty important things about the difference, a lot of which are pretty obvious is retrospect. 1) Places where it snows a lot have much more infrastructure in place to handle it. More road treatments, more frequent and better plowing, even roads are designed around snow. It's much easier to be a "good driver" in snow when you have well funded and practiced services backing you up. The reason places in, say, the American south melt down with an inch of snow or ice isn't because people are bad drivers so much as it doesn't take much snow to make roads dangerous as hell if you have no infrastructure to deal with it. 2) Similarly, in places where it snows a lot it makes sense to invest in things like snow tires because they're useful for a significant part of the year. Nobody where it snows a handful of times a year is going to buy snow tires not only because of the cost but because in addition to snowing less, many winter days can also be warm enough that snow tires are going to be a terrible driving experience and wear down much faster. 3) Perhaps most obviously, most things become easier when you do them a lot. "I come from a snowy region and driving in the snow is easy" really should be "I find driving in the snow is easy because I come from a snowy region". I used to be much better at driving in the snow when I did it all the time too, that's how practice works. But that's not really a lesson that does much good to anyone who lives somewhere with occasional snow. They probably are better off just staying home. 4) The thing I learned almost immediately is that regardless of how good you personally are, you're not alone on the road. When I first moved, I felt very comfortable in snowy conditions and regularly went out when it snowed. But it didn't take long to realize doing that meant sharing the road with people with way more confidence than skill (again because they didn't have much practice in the snow). And no amount of personal skill at snow driving is going to save you from someone else losing control and running into you.
- clnq 3y ago
  > Nobody where it snows a handful of times a year is going to buy snow tires How about all-season tyres? They wear much slower than snow tyres in my experience. Are they available in the US? Is there not enough demand in warmer states to have supply?
heelix 3y ago
It depends on the region of the US. There were times I've driven to the Minneapolis airport in 4"+ of snow falling down - flew to Washington DC, and found the world doing an emergency shutdown out there. In areas where you get snow, it is a very normal thing. In areas that don't get snow or ice, it is almost comical how many cars are in the ditches. Some States salt, some don't. Some don't even have the equipment. Studded tires are not usually allowed. I've got winter tires for my 996, as summer tires are terrible up here in the winter. A good all season works well enough.
- chiph 3y ago
  The internet went nuts over this scene in Raleigh NC about 9 years ago, where vehicles caught fire after their drivers over-revved them trying to get up a hill. https://www.wral.com/nc-s-winter-storm-in-gifs/13390141/ https://www.wral.com/nc-s-winter-storm-in-gifs/13390141/ To be fair, it's not entirely their fault. There just isn't much snow-clearing equipment in southern states - but that's because there's only a "major" (for the area) snowfall every 2-3 years. So there's no point in the state paying for that equipment, and there's no point in people owning winter tires (and needing a place to store them in the summer). And when severe weather does happen, often it's ice not snow. Everyone is going to have a bad day driving on ice. I do think the point from other posters about modern safety & stability systems making people get complacent is a good one. Anecdotal data: A former boss kept a count of ditched vehicles on his way to the office one time: 12. Of which 11 were Ford Explorers. They're not bad vehicles, just that that the fact they were driving an SUV caused the drivers to become overconfident.
  - clnq 3y ago
    Wow, 12 vehicles just on the commute? I have never seen this living in a snowy region. I would barely see ditched vehicles at all. Do you mean ditched as in "abandoned after slipping off the road"? I would see one or two every 50k miles. Though it is better to ditch than to drive yourself into an accident, I think. The over-revving story is hilarious but concerning. It's clear that these drivers were not taught to drive on ice. I suppose it's best to leave the car on the side of the road and return later if you have no instruction, training, and haven't sought out any knowledge for ice driving.
enkid 3y ago
The US is a geographically very diverse country with high mobility. That means there are a lot of people living in climates they are not used to, so did not learn how to drive when it snows or that you need to change your tires during winter. I am not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I have read from multiple sources that the US has the most extreme weather in the world, including blizzards, "Nor'easters," and lake effect snow. These tend to dump a lot of snow all at once, making preparation more difficult. Link about US's extreme weather : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-the-u-s-is-leading-the-world-in-extreme-weather-catastrophes https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-the-u-s-is-leading-...

by clnq 3y ago

jorlow 3y ago

Even in places that get a healthy amount of snow (e.g. in the Midwest of USA), many don't have snow tires -- it's a cost and inconvenience they try to avoid.

clnq 3y ago
Wow, that is really amazing.
- razeh 3y ago
  I live in a walkable inner ring Chicago suburb, and commute to work by bike or the El. Snow cleanup is excellent in our suburb, and we can get to things we want to drive to in bad weather on roads where the speed limit is never over 25 mph. We just don’t need winter tires.
  - clnq 3y ago
    Very interesting how different the approach is. Many European countries mandate Winter tyres for a period each year, even if they do not get much snow - https://www.uniroyal-tyres.com/car/tyre-guide/winter-care/winter-tyres-mandatory https://www.uniroyal-tyres.com/car/tyre-guide/winter-care/wi.... The mindset is more that if there could be snow, drivers must use Winter tyres, even when road clean-up and salting are used. Many countries here that do not mandate Winter tyres for the whole season still mandate tyres appropriate for driving conditions, which reads a lot like a requirement to use Winter, studded, or chained tyres in snow. Most countries like that also recommend Winter tyres. It's a very different approach from having many people not use Winter tyres in snow. I think this explains the fear of driving in snow to me. I would be very concerned if I had to drive in snow with Summer tyres as well.
- mrep 3y ago
  Why? I have all season tires and they work fine enough when it does snow but I also don’t drive much. When I looked into getting winter tires, I saw they generally last 60,000 miles or 6 years whatever comes first and since I only drive like 5,000 miles a year, that means I’d have to replace 2 sets of tires every 6 years instead of 1. If I drove 20,000 miles a year though I’d definitely get them.
  - clnq 3y ago
    It's amazing how large the mindset difference is between the US and European countries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35937993. You are talking about whether these tyres make sense. In many countries in Europe, this is not a question. It is mandated. I agree with your reasoning from an economic perspective, of course.

blibble 3y ago

in snow, I'm scared of other people on the road

arrowsmith 3y ago
Tbf this is a good attitude to have even when it's not snowing.

mywacaday 3y ago

On a visit to a friend in Norway we went up the mountains, the road was white and we were doing a consistent 60 kph. We stopped to take some photos and I noticed there was about an inch of ice on the road. In Norway you leagally have to have winter tyres and your driving test has an individual ice exam along with motorway and night exams. Training and the right equipment make most things a lot safer.

Retric 3y ago

Snow and ice provide more friction at colder temperatures. People who occasionally get snow are essentially placed in the worse possible condition an at or slightly above freezing surface. They aren’t using snow tires because the roads aren’t covered in snow long enough and nobody is replacing their tires for 48 hours after a once or twice a winter storm. So, the normal response is to avoid driving in it, which means they never learn how to drive in snow.

sokoloff 3y ago

Many (perhaps most) drivers have a mental model of driving that bypasses any understanding of traction circle and tire slippage. "When I want to go faster, I push this button under my right foot; when I want to stop, I push the other button to its left. It's usually safe to drive 8 mph over what the speed limit sign says." Those people are going to find snow problematic, because to drive effectively in snow, you need to have a better understanding of vehicle dynamics than is required to extract 0.25g of acceleration from your car on a clean and dry road. Even in New England (where we get a half dozen to dozen snow events per year), people often stay home in the worst of it, waiting until the main road are mostly clear, and then they go charging out on those mostly clear roads with their all-wheel drive, ABS, and traction control and then come to grief on a section that isn't in the set of mostly clear because "it was fine for the last 20 miles".

tharkun__ 3y ago
And if I read your parent correctly he's mostly driving on said "mostly clear" roads as well, since he mentions salt. If the road is salted and bare you're not driving in snow. You're driving on a regular road. That's not snow driving, period. When we've had fresh snow and you have 2 or 3 inches of snow that moves around under your tires, driving is way different. That turn you're supposed to go 50 kph in but would love to take at 70 kph under normal conditions? You really want to slow down because you really don't want to drive on your lane, you want to kinda drive in the middle of the road because you aren't actually sure where the lane ends as it's all just white. The snow will make your car move where you didn't want it to go and while you of course can steer against that to correct if you go too fast and too close to the edge of the road on a left turn you're gonna end up in the ditch. And you don't want to go 70 or even 50 if you're essentially making the road one lane. Sudden braking and all ... Of course a few days after the snow storm you have a hard packed snow surface that has had crushed stone (yes, no salt, the side streets here are not salted) spread on it. You can't drive exactly like it's summer but for the most part you can. You also now know where the ditch is (aka a wall of snow). Still, every year there's two places not 500m from my home where a snow plow regularly finds itself in the ditch while trying to clear snow and has to be pulled out. Even though they put down stakes in fall.

swarnie 3y ago

I drive a sensible European car with standard road tires, it wont climb a 2-3 degree incline with 1 inch of snow on it. I have never meet a person in real life with alternative weather tires. Its just not a thing in my country.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

MaulingMonkey 3y ago

> What is there to be afraid of? All the other idiots on the road with minimal/no snow experience, refrozen sleety wet black ice that's far more treacherous than proper dry snow, hills, roads that are not merely not salted, but so snowed in that even emergency services become unable to move around due to unplowed roads and getting snowed in, ... I'm arrogant enough to be willing to drive in Seattle snow with careful hill-avoiding route planning (and paranoid checking of hill-prone cross traffic.) Still managed to spend half an hour picking at the ice with a shovel the last time I did so when I didn't give it enough gas to get fully into a parking spot and became utterly immobile on the ice the last time I did so. This is what we're afraid of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZCyQ3emQg Or just this last winter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GButmfkNGmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GButmfkNGmg > Are these people driving with Summer tyres Yes > Perhaps the roads are not salted in the US? Inadequately > Are studded tyres allowed? Depends on the locale - not all-year around around here (tears up the road?), and I don't believe studded tyres are sufficient to be legal to go through the passes.

rorroe53 3y ago

Yep, proper tires (ideally studded), reasonable speed and avoiding sudden movements is all there is to driving in snowy/icy conditions. Not doing any of these three things can get you into trouble. Here in Finland statistically the most deadly months in traffic are in summer, when there's no snow or ice, and weather conditions are generally good. Holidays and great weather encourage people to drive fast, stay awake late, and drink alcohol.

throwaway22032 3y ago

I've driven in northern Norway with snow tyres. You're correct in saying that it's relatively safe and easy to do. In the UK no-one even switches to winter tyres when it's cold. With snow or ice people are running on 5-10 year old summer tyres with the minimum legal tread depth. Plus we're basically always in the melt-refreeze zone around 5 to -5c vs. a proper Norwegian winter at -10 to -40 whereby your car can form ice that will just never melt unless it's an ICE. It's just not the same at all. I miss proper winters!

mattlondon 3y ago
I see a lot of cars in the UK with tyres like Michelin crossclimates. I have them on my car too. FWIU they are basically an all-season tyre that has 75% the capability of a winter tyre ... Not just snow but also general wet weather etc when under 5c. There are loads of videos of YouTube of Cars using them driving up ski slopes etc. They seem like a good compromise for me for UK climate.
arrowsmith 3y ago
The thing about the UK is that it snows so infrequently* that it's just not worth the investment to deal with it properly. Where I live in the south, I think we've had snow on the roads maybe twice in the last four years, each time for only 1-2 days. The entire country grinds to a halt when it happens, but it happens rarely. *Or at least it's infrequent these days, I'm sure it snowed a lot more often when I was growing up, and my parents tell me that back in their day it would reliably snow a lot every winter. Must be a Chinese hoax.
- throwaway426079 3y ago
  We had snow on my street for about 5 days early this year (not a main road so didn't get cleared). Didn't grind to a halt at all - just needed a bit more care to get to the main road, which was cleared. I drive an ordinary FWD car with standard tires.

vrc 3y ago

I’ve lived in the northeastern US my whole life, and the number of people I know who don’t bother with snow tires and run “all-seasons” is shockingly high. The fact that a FWD or RWD car on winter tires is usually easier to drive in snow than an AWD with all-seasons is lost on them.

rainsford 3y ago

I learned to drive in a snowy part of the US and spent my first several years as a driver in those kind of conditions. When I moved to a place that gets much less snow, but still some, I had the same sort of attitude...how are people here so freaked out and bad at this? But having lived in less snowy conditions for quite a while now, I've learned some pretty important things about the difference, a lot of which are pretty obvious is retrospect. 1) Places where it snows a lot have much more infrastructure in place to handle it. More road treatments, more frequent and better plowing, even roads are designed around snow. It's much easier to be a "good driver" in snow when you have well funded and practiced services backing you up. The reason places in, say, the American south melt down with an inch of snow or ice isn't because people are bad drivers so much as it doesn't take much snow to make roads dangerous as hell if you have no infrastructure to deal with it. 2) Similarly, in places where it snows a lot it makes sense to invest in things like snow tires because they're useful for a significant part of the year. Nobody where it snows a handful of times a year is going to buy snow tires not only because of the cost but because in addition to snowing less, many winter days can also be warm enough that snow tires are going to be a terrible driving experience and wear down much faster. 3) Perhaps most obviously, most things become easier when you do them a lot. "I come from a snowy region and driving in the snow is easy" really should be "I find driving in the snow is easy because I come from a snowy region". I used to be much better at driving in the snow when I did it all the time too, that's how practice works. But that's not really a lesson that does much good to anyone who lives somewhere with occasional snow. They probably are better off just staying home. 4) The thing I learned almost immediately is that regardless of how good you personally are, you're not alone on the road. When I first moved, I felt very comfortable in snowy conditions and regularly went out when it snowed. But it didn't take long to realize doing that meant sharing the road with people with way more confidence than skill (again because they didn't have much practice in the snow). And no amount of personal skill at snow driving is going to save you from someone else losing control and running into you.

clnq 3y ago
> Nobody where it snows a handful of times a year is going to buy snow tires How about all-season tyres? They wear much slower than snow tyres in my experience. Are they available in the US? Is there not enough demand in warmer states to have supply?

heelix 3y ago

It depends on the region of the US. There were times I've driven to the Minneapolis airport in 4"+ of snow falling down - flew to Washington DC, and found the world doing an emergency shutdown out there. In areas where you get snow, it is a very normal thing. In areas that don't get snow or ice, it is almost comical how many cars are in the ditches. Some States salt, some don't. Some don't even have the equipment. Studded tires are not usually allowed. I've got winter tires for my 996, as summer tires are terrible up here in the winter. A good all season works well enough.

chiph 3y ago
The internet went nuts over this scene in Raleigh NC about 9 years ago, where vehicles caught fire after their drivers over-revved them trying to get up a hill. https://www.wral.com/nc-s-winter-storm-in-gifs/13390141/ https://www.wral.com/nc-s-winter-storm-in-gifs/13390141/ To be fair, it's not entirely their fault. There just isn't much snow-clearing equipment in southern states - but that's because there's only a "major" (for the area) snowfall every 2-3 years. So there's no point in the state paying for that equipment, and there's no point in people owning winter tires (and needing a place to store them in the summer). And when severe weather does happen, often it's ice not snow. Everyone is going to have a bad day driving on ice. I do think the point from other posters about modern safety & stability systems making people get complacent is a good one. Anecdotal data: A former boss kept a count of ditched vehicles on his way to the office one time: 12. Of which 11 were Ford Explorers. They're not bad vehicles, just that that the fact they were driving an SUV caused the drivers to become overconfident.
- clnq 3y ago
  Wow, 12 vehicles just on the commute? I have never seen this living in a snowy region. I would barely see ditched vehicles at all. Do you mean ditched as in "abandoned after slipping off the road"? I would see one or two every 50k miles. Though it is better to ditch than to drive yourself into an accident, I think. The over-revving story is hilarious but concerning. It's clear that these drivers were not taught to drive on ice. I suppose it's best to leave the car on the side of the road and return later if you have no instruction, training, and haven't sought out any knowledge for ice driving.

enkid 3y ago

The US is a geographically very diverse country with high mobility. That means there are a lot of people living in climates they are not used to, so did not learn how to drive when it snows or that you need to change your tires during winter. I am not a meteorologist or climatologist, but I have read from multiple sources that the US has the most extreme weather in the world, including blizzards, "Nor'easters," and lake effect snow. These tend to dump a lot of snow all at once, making preparation more difficult. Link about US's extreme weather : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-the-u-s-is-leading-the-world-in-extreme-weather-catastrophes https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-the-u-s-is-leading-...