chaos, apocalypse and chik-fil-a

[Dylan]

Other options include salting the roads or developing a thing called "public transportation".

[Dylan]

[jimmyz]

[Mr.Bill]

[Dylan]

Instead they were like "hey everybody lets all use the roads RIGHT NOW ALL OF US AT ONCE READY GO."

Who ever could have foreseen the result?

[John Galt]

i was thinking about this as i was driving to work in a snowstorm this morning (4-6 inches this morning), chuckling to myself. Nothing had been plowed and I was going 40 in a 50 like everybody else.

sure okay, you got some ice to deal with. this happens here all the time. and yeah, we get it salted... by the next day. the day it happens though, it's an ice rink. also, when it gets cold, salt is useless. it's even worse if it snowed a little, started to melt, and plummets in temperature, get similar results of icyness. or from cars warming the road as we move in the snow, melting, it, and then since it's under 0 degrees F out the salt doesn't do shit and it freezes. black ice, everywhere.

i don't put chains on, i just drive according to the weather. as exploited said, stop the jerky movements and you're golden. you're still guiding a ton of weight down the road and you should be fine.

but as for your cities lack of readiness... dump trucks (which i'm sure they have) with a little spinny salt attachment on the back is all they need. they can have one bit of salt piled up somewhere and they should be good

[exploited]

Galt is 100% correct. It isn't rocket science. It is not difficult to drive safely and competently on a road that has been iced over. I do it all the time, driving a Chevy Sonic with all-season tires. It is really simple. You go slow, you keep at least five or six car lengths behind another driver, and you do everything smoothly and slowly. Changing lanes? Do it without jerking the wheel, and do it gradually. You can't just jump back and forth between lanes like it's a beautiful sunny day. Want to slow down? Slowly, smoothly apply the brakes. If you feel them skip, ease off them for a second (you don't have to just stop braking entirely, you are just doing it too hard), and then slowly, smoothly apply the brakes again. This is why you have left yourself alot of space between cars.

My itty bitty wife who still doesn't have a full driving license and is extremely cautious behind the wheel has ZERO problems driving on ice, with next to no experience, because she uses her head and adjusts her driving style. There is no excuse for that f**k.

[John Galt]

even though i have ABS i don't 'trust it', or it's just habit, but when approaching a stop i start tapping those breaks hundreds of feet before i normally would without the weather. if i feel the ABS kick in i think that i am breaking far too hard and driving far to aggressively. i do this most of the winter because we can have ice wherever for whatever reason and you don't even notice it until you are gliding, but obviously when i know it's terrible out i am extra cautious

our freeways are of course plowed and salted first, and they still have issues, but nothing like 18 hour standstills. here's an idea, next time, a few hours before it starts snowing, take like 10 trucks and go salt the freeway. it'll take like an hour (yes i've driven through atlanta, not during rush hour, obviously, but salt when there are not that many people). like i said, it's not like they can't put a gritter on the back of existing dump trucks. and if you can't, get some guys with shovels and they can stand in the back throwing it out of the truck, like how they used to do, back in the day. NYC uses their dump trucks as plows. it's not that hard to repurpose existing vehicles so one is prepared for such. it happened jsut a couple of years ago in atlanta as well

as for the "we aren't used to it!!" whenever i am presented with a new problem, i don't just get out of my car and leave it in the middle of the freeway to go sleep in a cvs

[eynon81]

[exploited]

ABS is great but I also try not to rely on it in bad weather. It is really jerky and unpredictable. Traction control is really handy but I find it can be dangerous because it will randomly apply your brakes when a little bit of slide is fine. When I'm turning onto a street in town and I can't accelerate due to a little bit of slide at 20 km/h, it pisses me right off. Probably a good thing for inexperienced drivers though.