Flatlanders Think A Little Snow Is Tough To Drive In

Chicagoans, please STFU about yesterday’s snowstorm. Try driving in a hilly or mountainous place first.

Example 1: Seattle, where steep hills and the occasional rare but icy snowfall do not make for a fun time driving.

But their trip home for the holidays nearly turned tragic Friday when two charter buses carrying 80 students slid down a steep ice-covered Seattle street and crashed through a guardrail 20 feet above Interstate 5. The front wheels of one bus ended up dangling over the freeway.

“We were all screaming,” said 16-year-old Alex Hammell of Bothell, who was aboard the second bus. “I thought we were going to die.”

Via Local News | 2 buses skid down slick hill, barely avoid plunge to I-5 | Seattle Times Newspaper

Example 2: Salt Lake City, and the canyons leading up to major ski resorts.

Up Big and Little Cottonwood canyons, four-wheel drive and chains were required today. Snow was definitely sticking to the ground, which caused problems for a few drivers going through Big Cottonwood Canyon, especially.

One man overcorrected and slid off the road. A woman coming down the mountain hit an ice patch and slid off into the river. Her tipped SUV was partly submerged in the water, but both the driver and the passenger got out with only scratches.

Via KSL.com – Drivers have trouble navigating through snow storm

In Utah, this kind of accident is apparently called a “slide-off,” because there’s often an edge or a ditch on one side of the highway, and if you hit an icy patch on a “look, Aunt Nibby, no guardrails” kind of road, you might go for a sudden expedition.

But if you know how to drive in snow, you can get around all right, as long as you avoid the idiots that DON’T know. Basically, SLOW DOWN. Don’t hit the brakes, gently remove your foot from the gas and gently pump the brake pedal several times. Slow to a crawl before turns and take your foot off the gas before carefully turning the wheel. If you start to slide, turn the wheel in the direction of the slide, lightly pumping the brake. Don’t even think about hitting the accelerator until you’re straightened out. Stay in other drivers’ ruts if the road hasn’t been plowed yet.

These next two suggestions aren’t exactly… legal, but in a snowstorm, sometimes, you have to do what you must to get to shelter, or to the grocery store, or to the airport to pick up a stranded friend.

If driving up a hill, keep forward momentum at all costs. Maintain all deliberate speed. If there’s no traffic at a cross street on an uphill, check for cops, say “Snow Rules” firmly to yourself, and continue through the intersection. If there’s a big pile of snow (thrown off by a plow, perhaps) at a corner and you’re turning, check for traffic and cops, mutter “Snow Rules” again, and SLOWLY make the turn without stopping. If you stop in a pile like that, you’ll never get going unless you’ve got a high-clearance, 4WD or AWD vehicle. And even that’s iffy if you gun the engine and spin your wheels. Remember – GENTLY on the gas.

If you’re driving down a hill, your car has just been entered in the All-City Luge competition. Alternatively, look for a route down that angles across the slope of the hill – a more roundabout street that takes the scenic route is going to be easier to negotiate than going straight down. In Seattle, they used to just close the steepest streets and make people take the long way, but some idiot always had to show off his new Jeep. Inevitably, they wound up at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill with their pictures in the neighborhood paper.

However, if you live in a hilly city like Portland, and your neighborhood has been laminated with an inch or so of solid ice and then taken a hit of dry, powdery snow, you’re fucked. Quit thinking about going anywhere; cities that “never get snow” like Portland and Seattle don’t have salt trucks, sand trucks, or even snow plows. You’re screwed, so you’d better grab your video camera and get to a good vantage point. You might get a good price for the footage on the evening news.

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The title of this video is a misnomer: it’s “Portland drivers in the snow” but really what’s happening is there’s a very smooth layer of ice under a light dusting of powder. I used to live in Oregon and this kind of ice storm was not uncommon; I once drove through the Portland suburbs after my flight to Eugene was rerouted there. My friend Debbie and I ended up in a carload of other college students, being driven to Eugene in exchange for gas money and body weight (ourselves and our luggage made the driver’s car more manageable because it was heavier). On the way, we inched up a hill without stopping, going around other cars that stopped dutifully at stoplights that had gotten hopelessly stuck. The driver kept calling out “Snow rules!” and maintained forward motion no matter what. We kept an eye out for other people, cars, cops, and other obstructions.

We watched helplessly as an old man, walking back from the grocery store, fell on the ice and his entire bag of oranges rolled down the hill. We couldn’t stop, or we’d have gotten stuck.

About 5 hours later, we made it back to Eugene, which was covered with about 2 inches of ice. That kind of storm seemed to come about every other year or so; we’re lucky we haven’t gotten anything like that in Chicagoland since I moved here.

Yesterday, driving to work was really no problem. I had the new snow boots, I had all kinds of winter gear, and I got an early start. Fortunately, there weren’t many other people on the road, and the few that were out and about seemed to know how to drive prudently. I made it in about half an hour early. The whole rest of the day, people were whining about how bad it was. Granted, I don’t live that far away, but still: STFU! It could be worse, you could live someplace that isn’t flat!