Regions followed
SOME ADVICE ON WINTER DRIVING
OK, you live (however temporarily) in Michigan. We have winter. It snows. Get accustomed to it, particularly if you’re driving. With that in mind, there are a few other things that you should understand.
If you’re on a road or street with more than one lane in the direction you’re traveling, you get ONE lane – not half of each lane. If you can’t figure out the number of lanes or how to stay in one of them you probably shouldn’t be on the road. And note that this isn’t just a winter driving tip.
If it snowed (it does that here – see above), clean the snow off of your car before you drive it. That means clearing (or scraping, if necessary) the windows. If this is a new concept for you maybe you should wait for spring to drive. It’s bad enough that you don’t have a clue, but blundering around when you can’t possibly see properly is a danger to us all. Also, consider removing snow from headlights, turn signals, and tail lights. I know – you’re probably not using the turn signals anyway, but the other lights are critical at night. And clear the snow off the roof. When the car warms up and the bottom of that mass of snow on your roof starts to melt, it’s all likely to come down on your windshield when you hit the brakes. Your negligence is not an excuse when that happens and you hit something that you can’t see.
Roads and streets get wet and snowy. They get slippery. But when everyone else is able to drive 30 miles per hour, you can probably do better than 15. If you can’t, park your car and take the bus.
It gets dark early in the winter. Turn on your lights when it gets dark. You may not care if you can see, but a major benefit of headlights and tail lights is that other drivers can see where you are. See the note above about clearing the snow off of your lights.
As surprising as it may seem, having snow on the roads does not mean that stop signs or red lights should be ignored.
Put your cell phone away. You’re having trouble enough trying to drive in this climate and doing that with one hand while you’re distracted by conversation isn’t going to help. And what can you possibly be talking about that’s more important than not killing someone?
You have an SUV? You’re cool. All wheel drive can help you get through the snow. But what they didn’t tell you in all of those commercials that make you feel superior is that you can’t stop any better than anyone else on snow or ice. If you have macho issues, go out on a back road where you aren’t as likely to hit anyone else. Otherwise slow down.
So you’re doing reasonably well and the driver in front of you isn’t. He/she finally gets out of the way. You don’t need to sit there and glare at them as they muddle down the side street. They’re out of the way and you’re free to proceed – get over it and get moving.
And a few notes about pedestrians. We have them. They aren’t much smarter than the squirrels but they do more damage to your car if you hit them. We have a lot of crosswalks in town. Some of them even have flashing yellow lights. The trick is to yield to pedestrians that are in the crosswalk – stopping and waiting to see if anyone is going to cross so that you can feel good about waiting for them will increase your chances of getting hit from behind by another car, getting flipped off, or both. You also don’t need to wait until all pedestrians are all the way out of the street to proceed. Once they’re out of your lane and you can’t hit them without trying really hard, you can go.
This is a lot of stuff to remember. If that’s a problem, stick to the basics: put the phone away, clear the snow off your car, and use a bit of common sense.
