Snow drivers

By sovknight | January 21, 2008

OK people.  Will you please learn how to drive?  I mean, seriously.  This is Utah.  It snows here.  Every single year it snows here.  You live here, work here, play here, and yet you still don’t know how to drive here?

Yes, the snow is very pretty.  Yes, it is fun to play in the snow.  Skiing and snowboarding are fun.  Sledding is fun.  Building snowmen and making snow angels is fun.  However, driving around with some of the retards around here is NOT fun.  These people are dangerous.  It is dangerous to be on the street with these people.  Or on the sidewalk, or on any surface that’s somehow connected to the street.  I fear for my life every time I have to go out.

Then there’s the SUV people.  Know this, SUV people.  Your overpriced, gas-guzzling piece of shit quasi-truck is not a snowplow.  It is not invincible, it is not snow-proof, and it will slide off the road and crash just like anything else.  I don’t care how many wheels drive the thing, with you operating it, it’s destined to slip-slide all over creation before finally barreling into some sort of solid, non-moving bit of government property, like a lamp or a fire hydrant or a street sign. 

Your overpriced SUV will also not prevent you from getting stuck in the snow.  I hate to tell you this, but reality is reality.  Just tonight, as I was preparing to leave a parking lot, I noticed a woman in an overpriced SUV struggling to free herself from a snowdrift.  Why she drove into this snowdrift is beyond me, but I assume it had something to do with the fact that she was driving an SUV, so she thought nothing of it.  As I got out to offer assistance, I noticed that she had the typical response that someone has when stuck in the snow, and that is to floor the accelerator and gun it as hard as they can.  This of course has the following repercussions:

• The tires will do nothing but spin, because there is no traction and therefore nothing for them to grip WHICH IS WHY YOU ARE STUCK.
• The spinning tires create friction, which melts the snow underneath… snow that immediately freezes a nanosecond after the tires stop spinning, therefore creating ice underneath the tires and MAKING YOU MORE STUCK.

I gave her directions on exactly what to do to free herself, but apparently I was speaking some sort of foreign language, because although she heard me and responded with an affirmative, she proceeded to do exactly what she was doing before, as if I never said anything.  I told her to rock the car, knowing from years of experience driving in snow and ice that this is a simple concept and is quite effective in removing vehicles from snowy predicaments.  Rocking the car is very easy with a stick, but definitely possible with an automatic.  The process involves shifting from reverse to first quickly, using the inertia from the reaction to gain a few inches of space each time, and eventually gaining enough inertia to free yourself.  Again, this process was seemingly beyond her.  She would shift into reverse, gun the engine, spin the tires, shift into drive, gun the engine, spin the tires, wash, rinse, repeat until she finally gave up in frustration.

In the end, about five guys showed up from somewhere and together we used simple muscle power to push her out of the snow.  She should have been out ten minutes before, but she seemed appreciative enough.  As I walked to my car to take my leave, I noticed TWO OTHER CARS stranded in the same parking lot.

BAH!

Learn how to drive, people.