Alright, so a post at 11:30 pm on the day you say you’re going to post still counts right? Regard­less, here we are. My only defense is that I was no where near a com­puter for the time required to actu­ally put some­thing together. I’ll make it up to any/everyone that actu­ally reads this.

Any­ways, todays little post is a little bit of a bitch. That is to say that I am bitch­ing about some­thing that to this day man­ages to blow my mind.

Why the hell can’t people drive in the snow?

Seri­ously, it’s been around longer than we have. We have devel­oped wheel-​drives, tires, break-​styles, wiper-​blades, anti-​freezing, self-​heating, Pi-​calculating cars. So despite our advances against the frozen flecks of water still manage to turn every­one into drool­ing, knuckle-​dragging morons whos only response to having to drive in the stuff is to go under twenty km at any given time. For those out there still using the impe­r­ial system, that’s roughly 12.4 miles per hour.

Todays exam­ple will revolve around the recent swing in tem­per­a­ture changes: It was cold and rainy, but alright. Then the sun went down, things got cold, and thanks to nature, the roads started to freeze. Shortly after that it started snow­ing, which blan­keted things in a layer of snow. I admit, these are not road con­di­tions wherein dri­ving exces­sively is a smart idea. I would even go so far as to say that to err on the side of cau­tion would indeed be the better choice. Cau­tion doesn’t need to be 10 km (6.2 Mph).

Yeah so you can’t drive as fast, I get that, but going so slow I can out-​walk your car just so that you can ’safely’ ride the bumper of the car in front of you as you would at reg­u­lar speeds is, at best, retarded. You can drive faster, if you actu­ally allow your­self the time to stop. What this gen­er­ally means is that you back the fuck off, and leave room between you and the car you’re trying to ride in front of you. This is gen­er­ally good prac­tice in opti­mal dri­ving con­di­tions as well, if only to help avoid acci­dents by giving your dumb-​ass time to react.

Addi­tion­ally, you can actu­ally drive on the snow instead of the lanes that other cars have driven in. When you are facing the pos­si­bil­ity of dri­ving on the black ice that every other car pre­ced­ing has con­tributed to, you can actu­ally shift your car a bit to the left or right and drive on the snow which has been oth­er­wise left alone. This will allow you to actu­ally gain now-​valuable trac­tion, and get you to where you’re going before you die and ripen from old age while whim­per­ing in your car, curs­ing mother nature as you plow your gas pedal into the floor, won­der­ing why oh why wont your tires find grip?

Maybe these little things are not common sense for some, but for those of us that live in an area that has fre­quent and shitty winter weather con­di­tions, I would assume that after a while people would be able to adapt and drive in said weather con­di­tions with some mod­icum of abil­ity. Appar­ently this knowl­edge is only reserved for those who live in per­pet­ual snow, or happen to actu­ally drive in it. I’ve driven through con­di­tions that would blow peo­ples minds, and so maybe that has given me some keen insight into how to drive in the winter. A lot of it, how­ever comes from not being retarded.

One last note, get winter tires. All-​seasons will not cut it when push comes to shove, as today clearly proved to me. I know this because last year I drove my little Yaris around in the winter and slid through many a stop sign, because I simply did not have the grip avail­able to me. Lessons have been learned and this year I dropped the coin on it. I’ve not regret­ted the deci­sion. Maybe you don’t need them, but I can assure you that the dif­fer­ence they make is notice­able, and you will not regret the decision.

Fuck sakes people, I drive a Yaris and I nav­i­gate this weather better than the SUVs, Trucks, and about 70% of the other dri­vers on the road that man­aged to spin out for no God damned reason. My car is tiny and super-​light, and yet some­how here I am dri­ving like an appar­ent winter vet­eran. That’s sad people, sad.