Monday, February 27, 2017

How not to drive in the snow - part 1

If you live anywhere where it snows, you'll be used to people driving like dicks because apparently it's just not "the thing to do" to learn how to drive in snow. So people go about their lives, on bald summer tyres, driving as if it was a lovely, dry, sunny day. Texting, doing their hair, eating their breakfast, reading books, surfing their snapchats and generally not giving two shits about anyone else. This is doubly true on snow days and more so around snow plows where people seem to lose their mind completely.
You'd think this would be common sense (but I guess there's nothing "common" about common sense any more): don't overtake snow plows. At the back they're spewing grit, sand, salt and chemicals that will rust your car before you get where you're going, and at the front there's a huge plow with a tidal wave of snow coming off it. In between there's 10 or more tons of angry truck.
Of course the texting, hair-drying, book-reading brigade are entirely oblivious to this with their "me first" attitude, meaning that stuff like this happens.
In the first video we have a typical Utah driver who barely knows what a car is let alone how to drive. Sadly they got away with a spin but happily they didn't kill anyone else in the process:

And then we have this special individual who decides to hip-check a snow plow with his trailer because he's going too fast and overtaking too close on a downhill, off-camber bend covered in ice (why the hell he wasn't in the inside lane I'll never know). Fortunately this plow driver survived but not before being subjected to a 100m sheer drop off the side of the canyon:

The message is pretty simple - leave the plow drivers to do their jobs. The road behind them will be clearer than the road in front. You're gaining absolutely nothing from trying to pass them.