thoughts on winter driving and other delicate social tasks

[randomness]

I originally composed this a couple of weeks ago. The drive tonight through Rhode Island was worse; there were accidents all along I-295 as it quickly iced over, and I had to swerve--gently--to miss a wheel arch which had come off some random car. WPRO's talk radio host was in high dudgeon about the complete absence of any salters or sanders. He was right; I didn't see any either until I was nearly entirely out of Rhode Island.

On the other hand, I did have some more thoughts on the subject. And I didn't collide with anything, so that's all good. :)

But the original post follows, with some more comments added.

---

There was quite a bit of lake-effect snow last night as I drove from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Most of the way, the roads were more or less slick with ice and snow.

I did a lot of thinking as I let my winter driving reflexes keep the car under control.

The single most important point about driving on slippery surfaces is this: make no sudden moves. Your tires can do three things: they can turn your car, they can slow down your car, and they can speed up your car. Try not to ask them to do more than one of these at any given time. When the road is slick, they may not be fully able to accomplish even one of them. So don't make any abrupt changes of direction or speed if you don't have to. Sometimes, the best course of action is to do nothing, like on an icy bridge. If it's straight and level, you may be able to go right across it without a hint of a problem if you keep on going directly forward without touching either the accelerator or the brake, where someone who panics might easily lose control.

You may encounter a situation where you must make some change or direction or speed. Then, make any changes you must make gracefully, looking as far ahead as you can to avoid having to take hasty action later.

Quick changes of speed or direction can, if you're relatively lucky, get your car buried in a snowbank by the side of the road. At worst, they can get you buried. Fancy equipment won't help--plenty of SUV drivers can attest to that--and even traction control can fail if none of the wheels can get sufficient grip on the road.

Overconfidence can get you into trouble faster than you can imagine.

---

Additional thoughts, after driving on glare ice in Rhode Island tonight:

If you do have to make some change of direction, let everyone know well ahead of time, so they have plenty of time to react. And when you've signaled you're going to do something, carry through on it, because telling people you're going to do something and then failing to do it is extremely confusing.

Sometimes it is not clear whether what you are driving on is just wet pavement or black ice. One can change to the other in a disturbingly short time. Don't assume conditions are unchanging just because they look like they are. It may be a very big mistake, making that assumption.

You can do everything right, and still end up in a wreck, if someone near you screws up and crashes into you. So it's useful to try and identify the people around you who clearly don't know what they're doing, either because it's obvious they have no clue, or they're obviously overconfident. Don't stay with them; it's better to just let them roll right out of your life. You may see them again later by the side of the road. But at least you won't have been part of their disaster.

Comments

here, here

[wren13.livejournal.com]

Drove from NH to Canton, MA about 9pm last night - the roads were in terrible shape - mostly slush until the Pike, then clean roads and less traffic. Very few morons, thank heaven, but I completely agree with your strategy to stay out of their way to avoid being part of their accident.
NH really had good road clearance on the town roads, but the highway not so much. I was really surprised at just how bad 93 and 95 were.

Re: here, here

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Glad you made it okay and got there safe!

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Huh; as I was reading this, particularly the last segment and even more particularly the last paragraph, it occurred to me that these were all suggestions that could also apply to life in general:

You can do everything right, and still end up in a wreck if someone near you screws up and crashes into you.So it's useful to try and identify the people around you who clearly don't know what they're doing, either because it's obvious they have no clue, or they're obviously overconfident. Don't stay with them; it's better to just let them roll right out of your life. You may see them again later by the side of the road. But at least you won't have been part of their disaster.

Think about it:)

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

That also feels applicable to life in general to me.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I tried! :)

[dpolicar]

I was about to post precisely the same thing, but you said it first. Yay!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

In fact, I wrote much of the post carefully so that much of it could be read as a commentary on "other delicate social tasks".

It was fun to write something that could be read as both literally and figuratively accurate.

(I probably have gotten too much amusement from writing this--viz. my commenting that I intended that dual purpose--and should probably have left my words speak for themselves, but I did want to express my joy in having succeeded in the task I set myself.)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely.

Note the title. :)

[oneagain.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes. gravitrue pointed that out to me later. I felt silly.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

*hug* You needn't feel silly, except perhaps in a good way. :)

[lono-i-ka-makah.livejournal.com]

LONO SUGGESTS SMALL GRAVEN IMAGES OF POLYNESIAN GODS TO ENSURE SAFETY DURING WINTER WEATHER!

ALSO DEFENSIVE DRIVING!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Small enough graven images of Polynesian gods, made of sandstone and rock salt, in quantities of several billion to the mile, would have served the state of Rhode Island well.

Alternatively, a large enough graven image of a polynesian god dropped on the state would have solved the problem semi-permanently. I think one at least five miles square might have done nicely, particularly if it had been traveling at several hundred miles per second.

On the other hand, I personally would have been hard pressed to survive the latter, so maybe I'd have preferred the former solution.

[midsummernd.livejournal.com]

This post was so insanely helpful! Thank you! Yesterday was quite literally my first real winter driving experience, and it turns out that I was instinctively doing everything right. I think that living in the Boston area has, if nothing else, taught me to tune out other people's road rage and bad driving, and focus on what I can do to get myself from A to B. My mantra this week: "You are not going to make me go faster." (Or, "You are not going to make me turn into oncoming traffic, as one SUV was really keen for me to do). Yay!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased that something I wrote helped you. I'm really glad you were safe!

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

[...] Fancy equipment won't help--plenty of SUV drivers can attest to that--and even traction control can fail if none of the wheels can get sufficient grip on the road.

Overconfidence can get you into trouble faster than you can imagine. [...]

Sorry, just saw this, as I'm terribly behind my LJ reading.

I will definitely agree that overconfidence can get people into trouble, and that SUVs tend to be seen in the ditch far more often than other cars, giving birth to the joke that the only thing that SUVs/Jeeps/trucks can do for you in snow is get you stuck further from help.

But I'm wondering why you'd consider SUVs "fancy equipment"... from my point of view, SUVs are probably the furthest thing from fancy, a compact car is orders of magnitude fancier.

Here's the thing: trucks are probably the simplest form of vehicles, they are the cheapest thing to produce, and when you slap a high price on them due to the status symbol SUVs became, they produce the most profit for the manufacturers. And simple is actually not a bad thing in certain situations, like farms, for example. But trucks have a simple (and cheap to make) suspension, transmission and basically no safety features to speak of.

Almost every single thing that is desirable and makes cars safer also makes them harder and more expensive to manufacture. High clearance off the ground? Higher center of gravity means less stable. Very desirable at low speeds in a farm, not so much at high speeds on highways. Sophisticated independent suspension front and back? Very stable, tends to keep the car going the way you steer under adverse circumstances, particularly slippery circumstances. Easy to break when off road. Front-wheel drive? Sure, tends to keep the car going in the direction you want, unfortunately not as cheap to make as an exposed axle to the rear differential like in trucks. Why would one want four-wheel drive? Because in a farm, particularly when driving on mud or gravel at low speeds, it's nice to be able to lock all four wheels and make them drive at exactly the same speed (thus disabling the differentials); also cheap to make and fixes a common problem in farm equipment. Unfortunately, driving without a functioning differential and making all wheels turn at the same speed tends to disable steering and stability. The fix is all-wheel drive, that uses 4-wheel independent suspension, one differential in the front, another in the back, and a third one to balance the power distribution front-to-back. For good or bad, all-wheel drive is terrible in a farm that has lots of deep mud or very deep snow, but wonderful at highway speeds in most situations.

Now, "traction control" is a very wimpy piece of equipment indeed. It's actually just software and some have described it as "reverse ABS" -- ABS is supposed to release the brakes very rapidly and repeatedly when the wheels are about to lock. Traction control uses the same equipment to very rapidly apply the brake to the wheel(s) that spin, so the differential can transfer more power to the wheels that can actually help you. Works relatively well in front-wheel drive cars, not so much in rear-wheel drive cars (where it's better than nothing, but still substandard compared to even a standard front-wheel drive car). And some places in Europe are trying to provide heavy incentives to phase in "Stability Control" which uses the ABS/Traction Control system to apply the brakes to selected wheels to control and correct yaw/skidding -- we have the system in our current car, and it works well but it's incremental improvement on the all-wheel drive system, altho I'm willing to accept it's a quantum leap for normal two-wheel drive cars.

And if I've never told you the story about the first time I drove on lots of snow, I should tell it to you some time.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Actually, I really didn't want to engage in a religous argument about SUVs.

I used "fancy equipment" in the sense that the normal road user does, which generally means "this technological fix that will solve all my problems". My point is that *no* technological fix can help you if you screw up, and that many people put their trust and hope in high tech, when their problem is actually one of judgment.

In any case, the whole essay was intended as something of an allegory about interpersonal relationships, rather than literally about driving; I tried not to be wrong about the details of driving on slippery surfaces, but mostly I wanted to make all the points work for social interaction. A number of readers appeared to have gotten that, but perhaps I was still too subtle.

I'm also glad you quoted the 4WD joke--about getting stuck farther from help--some old Vermonter told me. :)

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Sorry, apparently I was too subtle.

I got the allegory about interpersonal relationships. I meant to say that I agree with everything you said, except that SUVs are fancy equipment. Sure, putting one's trust in the technological fix instead of good judgement, is a bad thing, but I wanted to highlight the fact that putting one's trust into a fake fix, namely SUVs, is worse.

Most people go by labels, they don't even understand what the labels mean. 4WD, AWD, no difference right? Also putting one's trust into the _wrong_ fix for your problem: is your problem fixed by going fast and stable? Or do you have problems getting stuck on mud/deep snow and you need high clearance from the ground? The fixes are mutually incompatible.

Also complicated because one often sees a "pro" doing something very well and mistakenly thinks that using the same equipment will fix one's problems even though one's problems are vastly different -- that is also common in the kitchen, just look at the number of people who don't know how to buy the correct stovetop for what they use, and that can probably be another allegory for interpersonal relationships too, but not now.

In any case, yes, the normal user is safer with the supposedly "not fancy" car than with the trucks. Probably why most people should also just stick to telling the truth and having a monogamous relationship, they not only are *not* ready for the trucks, they are probably more dangerous to themselves and anyone driving/having a relationship near them if they try anything different from the norm.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

most people should also just stick to telling the truth

Sad to say, this seems to be too hard for a lot of people. I guess a lot of people don't like where that road takes them, and they think going off the road will be better somehow.